
JOHN LE 



DAWSO 




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Book- . 1- ' 

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A RACES REDEMPTION 



BY 
JOHN LEARD DAWSON 




BOSTON 
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
1912 






copyright, 1912 

Sherman, French &* Company 

Printed in U.S.A. 



£ : CU319183 



"Read and study as if God had spoken directly 
to you. And do it with as little bias from the creeds 
of the church as is safe. This whole theological 
world has not yet been circumnavigated. Push out 
into the sea and explore farther than anyone has 
. . . The Holy Ghost is to-day in the world, 
seeking for prophets, and grieved because he does not 
find as many as he wants." 

Prof. L. T. Townsend, 
Sacred Rhetoric Lectures, 
Boston University, 1875-6. 



Never say you think as other people think simply 
to please them, not even when those other people 
have acquired the right of calling themselves by such 
names as churches, associations, synods, conventions, 
conferences, assemblies or councils. It would be bad 
for you and not much better for them. You need 
your own self-respect and the approval of that God 
who made you a rational being that you might weigh 
and decide for yourself in matters of every sort. 
These people, too, need the thought you are able to 
add to theirs quite as much as you need that which 
they are able to add to yours; and the less they feel 
that need the greater it is. Therefore be true to 
your intellect that you may be true at once to your- 
self and all other men. Even though you cannot 
deny that there must be undetected error mixed with 
your truth, be not abashed, but say out your word 
bravely; for the case is no better with them. 

The old heresies did not have salt enough in them 
to preserve them even to our time; and there are only 
a few sincere things extant with more of vanity and 
less of truth in them than portions of the ancient 
orthodoxies, they are all so mixed with the old pa- 
ganisms. And are they not, at the same time, all 
very distressingly of our own flesh and blood, too — 
our very own? 



PREFACE 

Truth wins its way slowly. It is well, however, 
for us to remember that it does so surely. No 
part of it can always remain either covered up 
or lost. It is now established that God's general 
method in creation was that of those long upward 
processes which we indicate by the word evolu- 
tion ; and if the interpretations represented by 
this volume are correct, it will eventually be every- 
where confessed that his method in redemption is 
the same. The aim in creation was to bring mat- 
ter to its highest possibilities by allying it with 
the vital, the moral and the spiritual, as these 
exist in man; and the goal of redemption will be 
attained when man reaches that summit where 
the spiritual in him will assimilate all else to itself, 
causing even his coarse clay to disappear in the 
process. Indeed this work might, not too unsuit- 
ably, have been entitled "Evolution through 
Christ." 

The Twentieth Century version of the New 
Testament has been used, not because it was 
regarded as absolutely correct at every point, 
but because it is in present day English, and 
because by using it in place of improved transla- 
tions which he himself might have attempted, the 
author could give all his readers the opportunity 



PREFACE 

of verifying his quotations. The Old Testament 
passages, on the other hand, have, as a rule, been 
drawn from the English revision of 1885. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 




PAGE 


I 


Introduction 


1 


II 


God's Righteousness and Man's Sin 


20 


III 


Jesus as a Sign 


34 


IV 


The Making of Jesus 


45 


V 


The Consciousness of Jesus 


66 


VI 


Jesus and the Holy Spirit 


85 


VII 


The Sinlessness of Jesus 


103 


VIII 


Jesus the Social Reformer 


117 


IX 


Jesus the Revealer of the Father 


136 


X 


The Kingdom and Church of Jesus 


152 


XI 


Jesus the Redeemer of His Church 


168 


XII 


Jesus and the Atonement 


186 


XIII 


Jesus and the Sacrificial System 


203 


XIV 


Jesus and the Sense of Sin 


232 


XV 


Jesus the Bearer Away of Sin 


246 


XVI 


Jesus the Mediator and Intercessor 


261 


XVII 


Jesus and Biblical Ethics 


279 


XVIII 


Jesus and the Perfect Ethical Code 


294 


XIX 


The Eschatology of Jesus 


301 


XX 


Jesus the Deliverer from Death 


321 


XXI 


Jesus and National Destiny 


350 


XXII 


Jesus the Complete Savior 


369 


XXIII 


Conclusion 


388 




Index 


422 



INTRODUCTION 

It is safe to assume that righteousness is every- 
where the same in its character and its operations, 
that it never exists apart from love, and that men 
can and do detect its presence where it is dis- 
played and its absence where it is not displayed; 
and that this is as true when we come to the con- 
sideration of theories touching God's dealings 
with our race as it is in matters of less scope and 
moment. 

In the pages which follow I have used both the 
Old and New Testaments as books composed of 
writings which represent the ideas of God and his 
righteousness which existed in the minds of lead- 
ing thinkers of the Israelitish race at various 
times during several centuries of the history of 
that remarkable people. These ideas I have 
regarded as partly true and partly false. I have 
taken the ground that the false was very largely 
the contribution of the priests, who were guilty of 
every sort of greed and oppression ; while the true 
was set forth in a growingly worthy manner by 
the prophets, who scorned all that was base and 
sordid and unfair, preached high ideals in the 
name of God, and accepted ruin, torture and even 



2 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

death, rather than degrade their manhood by 
unworthy concessions to priestly, popular, or 
royal power or prejudice. 

I have assumed that all teaching, which is gen- 
uinely Christian, must not only accept but also 
incorporate, everything in the way of verified 
science which reaches us, whether from the pen of 
a Darwin or a Wallace, an unbelieving Haeckel, 
with his 4000 radiolaria in the proof, or the Dar- 
winian Jesuit, Father Wasman, with his 4000 
species of ants. But I have not assumed that 
the final word of science on the question of origins 
has yet been spoken. I have even questioned 
whether either the word God or the word Nature 
taken by itself, is the one the use of which is cal- 
culated to throw most light upon the various 
phases and stages of world formation, or the 
whole history of our own planet. 

I may cite here one of the latest words of the 
great Ernest Haeckel. On page 94 of his "Last 
Words on Evolution" he says: 

"We may instance, as a peculiarly interesting fact 
in the psychic life of the unicellular radiolaria, the 
extraordinary power of memory in them. (The ital- 
ics are mine.) The relative constancy with which 
the 4000 species transmit the orderly and often 
complex form of their protective flinty structure 
from generation to generation can only be explained 
by admitting in the builders, the invisible plasma- 
molecules of the pseudopodia, a fine 'plastic sense of 
distance,' and a tenacious recollection of the archi- 



INTRODUCTION 3 

tectural power of their fathers. The fine, formless 
plasma-threads are always building afresh the same 
delicate flinty shells with an artistic trellis-work, and 
with protective radiating needles and supports al- 
ways at the same points of their surface." 

Continuing he refers to Ewald Hering's word 
concerning memory as "a general function of 
organized matter." And this word of Hering's 
has certainly a very wide application, if memory 
is involved in all repetitions of a given act, which 
are to be witnessed in the successive generations of 
given species of living organisms. 

Memory of this sort is to be found in the vege- 
table as well as in the animal world. It stands 
revealed, too, even' time a crystal takes shape or 
a chemical combination is effected. Hydrogen is 
never exploded in the air without remembering to 
take up one unit of oxygen for every two of its 
own, and so to form water. Water itself never 
forgets to expand when freezing. In short each 
element has a perfect memory touching its own 
ways and a perfect memory also for the possibil- 
ities of other elements in relation to itself. When 
we come to chemical marriage we find each ele- 
ment perfectly schooled in the allowable and the 
forbidden, and never witness a case of miscegena- 
tion, though perhaps we do see some instances of 
mismating, which are speedily followed by a 
loosening or a complete severance of the tie. We 
never find the sweet briar mistaking its peculiar 
fragance for that of the hedge rose, nor the fir 



4 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

putting on the garments of the spruce, nor the 
birch those of the maple. And the tree which 
lives its life altogether alone from the start has 
as good a memory as the one that is in the way of 
getting lessons from its elders. The truth is 
that memory, in the sense in which these great 
scientists have used it, is common to all matter, 
whether organized or otherwise — it is as truly the 
inheritance of the element hydrogen as of the 
radiolaria. 

How shall we account for this? Laws are 
only constantly applied rules or forces steadily 
used in given directions. What or who applies 
them? Nature? Nature is everything in gen- 
eral and nothing in particular. HaeckePs latest 
word is "that the highest concept, God, lies in 
those laws themselves — those great eternal, iron 
laws, based upon the very nature of things, 
according to which the entire world proceeds." 

We have three things here, or two things and 
a person. We have "the great eternal iron laws," 
"the very nature of things upon which they are 
based" and "lying in those laws themselves the 
highest concept, God" ; and it would seem that 
while "God" is but "the highest concept," or idea, 
of some human mind, "the great eternal iron 
laws" manage to carry on the work of a person 
infinite in every highest attribute known to man, 
upheld, as these laws continuously are, by "the 
very nature of things" ! Among their other 
achievements these "great eternal iron laws" put 



INTRODUCTION 5 

memory into things animate and inanimate, in 
such a triumphant way that they simply never 
forget! This is a stupendous achievement. But 
while one agrees at once that the thing has been 
done, one pauses before the description of the 
doer and asks himself whether, with God and 
great eternal iron laws to choose between, he 
would not have changed God from "the highest 
concept" to an infinite person, and regarded him 
as doing everything according to the counsel of 
his own will in the irresistible manner suggested 
by "the great eternal iron laws" of our scientist. 
That done, God would also appear in the case as 
himself "the very nature of things." 

This is what I have done. And, besides, I have 
taken the liberty of suggesting that it is as Life 
that God has been producing and fashioning all 
things from the first. Laws are dead iron things, 
Nature is vague and indefinite, but, as all men 
know, Life has in it intelligence, with both the 
memory and the imagination, of which so many 
evidences are to be found by the student of things 
past and present on this planet and elsewhere. 
Life possesses also, as every man knows, Volition 
and Conscience. Above all, it possesses love. 
Surely it is upon this Life, as the very nature of 
things, that the laws are based, according to 
which the entire world proceeds. Every evolu- 
tionist knows that the movement of things has 
been upward from the start and that it is upward 
still. The higher characteristics of Life are con- 



6 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

stantly subjugating to their uses the lower; and 
these on their part are not crippled or crushed, 
but exalted and glorified in the process. 

The blind man's concept of the central body of 
our planetary system is not the only sun there is. 
But for the existence from of old of that vast 
center of attraction and source of light and heat, 
neither he nor his concept would ever have found 
a place on this planet. "God, the highest con- 
cept," is but a testimony to the existence of God, 
the foundation and, at the same time, the builder 
of all that is. To do as Haeckel does and make 
"great eternal iron laws" the vast Creator of all 
things, is to ask men to believe that nature places 
law above personality. But this is an achievement 
contrary to all human experience and, therefore, 
miraculous. If one must have miracles, he need 
not be blamed if he prefers to trace them back 
to the will of an infinite person, for this does not 
contradict experience. Moreover the infinite per- 
son simply must do surpassing things, if he acts 
at all, and a worthy personality can neither be 
inactive nor fail to do deeds worthy of himself. 
These latter conclusions also are based upon 
experience. It was the self-manifestation of the 
all embracing Personality that produced "the 
highest concept." This statement, if I under- 
stand Haeckel's latest positions, is one which he 
himself might not dispute. 

No one need entertain any misgivings touching 
inspiration and revelation. That matter is sim- 



INTRODUCTION 7 

ply a question of demand and supply in a world 
which science has uncovered before our eyes in 
such a way that we see in it strength forever 
revealing itself in all loving helpfulness, and so 
making weakness more and more savingly ac- 
quainted with it. The parent birds with their eggs 
and then their fledgelings, the whole story of 
family life and home-training, in our own race, 
and the delight men take in making themselves 
known, in every uplifting way possible, to their 
animal servants and pets, till these actually 
acquire the power of intelligently and gladly 
co-operating with them in carrying out their 
desires, all exist as so much standing testimony 
to this fact. That which appears upon the sur- 
face of things testifies concerning that which lives 
at their center. Life is the same from the gyrat- 
ing electron onward. The center of the atom 
reveals itself to every electron of the group by 
holding it safely in leash. So God reveals him- 
self wherever conscience is allied with thought and 
volition by holding men hard to himself as the 
Right and the Good. Personal themselves they 
cannot but see him as also personal, and the 
source of personality in themselves, nor fail to 
realize that he is pouring his own thought and 
purpose into them more and more. If this is not 
true of absolutely every man, it is certainly true 
of the race taken as a whole. 

I have passed by the question of the author- 
ship of the various portions of the New Testa- 



8 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ment as one of literary and historical, rather than 
theological or practical importance ; and I have 
shown my confidence in the general soundness of 
Harnack's most recent position as to their dates. 
The most important of them historically seem to 
me to have been written, eschatological sections 
and all, prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 
70 A. D. 

My exegesis of some of the eschatological sec- 
tions themselves will reveal a departure from the 
teachings of both the Pre-millennarian and Post- 
millennarian schools. The New Testament 
writers believed in the immanent Christ as they 
believed in the immanent God. It will be found, 
too, that the resurrection of the dead is viewed as 
only an incident in connection with the triumph 
of Life in its highest manifestations. These 
changes in New Testament interpretation have 
for years seemed to me inevitable, if we are ever 
really to know what it was these writers indicated 
by the terms which they employed in this connec- 
tion. 

And, finally, as to the matter of the redemp- 
tion of the race itself, the thought of the past has 
seemed to me wholly inadequate. The question 
is not one of slight importance. The Fall, how- 
ever interpreted, is a racial fact. Through it 
men became, or become, self-centered, selfish, God- 
renouncing, with their careers sadly soiled by sins 
and crimes, and their consciences uneasy. 

The Son of God came to buy men back from all 



INTRODUCTION 9 

this. To buy back whom? The race as a race, 
or only a limited number of individual men and 
women? To buy back how? Completely, or 
only in part? To buy back where? Here, while 
the race still lives its earthly life? Or will that 
full redemption be experienced only through the 
conversion of our flesh to spirit, and our removal 
as a race to some better world than this? Would 
this be a genuine redemption at all? Or are we to 
abandon the doctrine that the Divine ideal for our 
race, which the Fall interfered with, or at least 
postponed, was that it should be introduced to a 
long and unbrokenly holy career of upward pro- 
gress here upon the earth? 

Present day thought rejects the Calvinian doc- 
trines of predestination and a limited atonement. 
We declare that it was never the purpose of God 
to save only a fraction of mankind, that Christ 
died for all, that the gospel message is for all 
alike, and that the Holy Spirit moves in equal 
love upon all hearts. We affirm that the reason 
why one man is won to righteousness while his 
brother perseveres in sin, finds its true answer 
in the freedom of the human will. We are sure, 
that is to say, that God's purpose to save touches 
our race as a whole. But we are equally sure, 
too, that to this day that purpose is far 
from being uniformly victorious. Men still love 
darkness rather than light, and live and die 
impenitent. Human depravity is still a fact 
which cannot be ignored, for it constantly reveals 



10 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

itself in many detestable, as well as ordinary sins 
and crimes. What then? Is God's redeeming 
purpose and plan never to achieve more than a 
partial victory on this planet? Is the race to 
remain substantially what it is now to the very 
end? Is the question of the seeker of salvation 
always to be, How may I learn so to live in this 
world as to get safely out of it? Is this world 
never to become a universal school for the 
cultivation of universal holiness? Is it al- 
ways to be just a hospital, in which some men, 
and some men only, will recover from the malady 
of sin, and go forth to the unending enjoyment 
elsewhere of moral and spiritual health? 

These questions are not of slight importance. 
They really mean this. Is there to be a redemp- 
tion of the race at all, or only a redemption out 
of the race of a limited number, from generation 
to generation, including the last? Up to the 
present this is what has really taken place. Only 
some out of each generation attain to a life 
that is worthy, while vast numbers never learn to 
even nobly aspire. How are things to be in the 
future? Practically as they are now in every 
respect? Or are they slowly and steadily to 
improve, till a day dawns in which sin shall have 
given place to holiness in every individual of the 
generation then alive upon our planet? In short, 
is sin to live on here as long as our race does, or 
will our Lord Jesus Christ persevere in his vic- 
tories over it, till he has utterly exterminated it 



INTRODUCTION 11 

and introduced our race to its spiritual Eden of 
holy joyous consecration to God? 

By our manner of answering these questions 
we say whether we believe in the actual redemp- 
tion of our race, as an earthly one, or not. 
Believing that the Redeemer came, poured out his 
soul in death for the race, was raised from the 
dead, exalted to God's right hand and gifted with 
all power on behalf of the race, is one thing; and 
believing that he will accomplish his task in any 
complete way is quite another. The complete 
salvation of the race from the stand- 
point of Glory in heaven could be accomplished 
only through the final recovery from sin and suf- 
fering to holiness and blessedness of every mem- 
ber of it, from the first man down to the last of 
his descendants — the recovery from sin and suf- 
fering of every Cain as well as every Abel, of 
every Jezebel as well as every Elijah. We think 
we have no sure ground in either scripture or 
experience for such a doctrine as this. But the 
question before us now is whether there is any 
scriptural basis for the conclusion that a time is 
coming when our race, as it will then be found 
upon the earth, will stand before God separated 
from all its outward sins and inward depravities, 
together with all the disastrous consequences now 
associated with these, and fulfilling in every 
respect its high destiny, having been raised at 
last through the toil of the redeeming ages to the 
very image and likeness of God. 



12 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Jesus taught his disciples to pray in the inter- 
ests of the Kingdom of God — "Thy will be done 
on earth, as in heaven." Is that prayer ever to 
receive its full answer? Is there one in heaven 
who does not do God's will completely and gladly? 
And will the prayer be fully answered as long as 
there is one left upon the earth who does not do 
that will in the same manner? 

Such a redemption of our race as that indicated 
above would include three things in particular. 
The first of these would be the entire removal from 
the earth of all willful opposers of that right- 
eousness which the Son of God came to make uni- 
versal. This entire removal of the wicked whether 
accomplished through converting grace or the 
slow operations of the law of the survival of the 
fit, or of both together working along parallel 
lines, would eventually place our earth in the sole 
possession of the righteously disposed. I have 
used the words "righteously disposed" instead of 
the word righteous, because all round righteous- 
ness of life always means so much more than right 
dispositions, implying, as it does, right knowledge 
and the necessary moral strength at the var- 
ious points of human activity — two things in 
which the Christian of to-day, like his brother of 
other times, displays an all too evident lack. 

The second thing, therefore, which the redemp- 
tion of our race must include is its full develop- 
ment in all that pertains to intellectual and voli- 
tional activity along the lines of right conduct. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

The race must be brought to the point where each 
member of it will always know the very thing he 
ought to do, and will always be prompt in his 
response to the voice of each duty he meets. And 
since the body, and particularly the brain, is the 
instrument both of the intellect and the will, the 
redemption of the race must include such thor- 
ough expansion or repair of that instrument as 
will fully fit it for the highest service it can be 
called upon to render. It must be brought up 
to perfection for the acquisition and retention of 
knowledge, on the one hand, and for carrying out 
the behests of the will, on the other. Disease 
must disappear and physical readiness, zest and 
courage must become universal and triumphant 
among men. There can be no perfect moral or 
spiritual health in a physically diseased race. 
Physical disease, as long as it continues, must 
impair that health by weakening the understand- 
ing or the will or both. 

All power in heaven and in earth has been given 
to Jesus in the interests of his kingdom. He 
reigns and must "reign as king until God has put 
all his enemies under his feet." As king he is also 
Judge of all men, with full authority to gather 
from his kingdom all that hinders and those who 
live in sin (Matt. 13:41). On the other hand 
there are no heights of holiness to which he is 
unable to show the feet of his people the way. 
And while he was here in the flesh, when did he 
ever meet disease and death without delivering 



14 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

their victims if these victims themselves, or their 
friends, were willing to accept his aid? 

It will be ours now to discover, if we can, how 
far and by what means the apostolic church 
believed our Lord Jesus Christ would work out the 
redemption of our race here upon the earth. But 
a word on the genuine interpretation of scripture 
ought to precede this search. 

When we approach the Bible asking what its 
teachings on any matter are, there are some 
things which we ought particularly to remember. 
Its books and letters are not detached literature, 
which might have been produced anywhere and at 
any time in the world's history. Each was writ- 
ten with the definite end in view of instructing 
and helping some particular people or class, which 
existed at the time its writer did his work. Every 
phrase and sentence and paragraph had a definite 
meaning for the writer, which he was seeking to 
convey to the minds of those who were to be his 
first readers. Our first question, therefore, to- 
day must be — What did John or Peter or James 
try to teach the men of his generation by means 
of this or that paragraph or sentence or phrase? 
And until we have made this discovery we have 
nothing on which to rely for present use. 

There are no second meanings. The first sense 
is the true sense and the only one. The language 
used to describe one event may chance to describe 
quite accurately more than one event of a like 
sort which may occur later ; and it may be quoted 



INTRODUCTION 15 

for the purpose centuries or millenniums after it 
was first penned. But no sober-minded man 
would assert that the earlier writer must there- 
fore have foreseen every incident which his lan- 
guage was fitted to portray. There may be second 
or third or even many applications of given 
descriptive statements, but, let me repeat it, there 
are no second meanings. The statements of scrip- 
ture are not things to juggle with. Each was 
penned for the one purpose of conveying to other 
minds than that of the writer, some truth or fact 
which he wished the men of his own time to know. 

"Our Salvation is nearer now than when we 
accepted the Faith. The night is almost gone; 
the day is near." (Rom. 13:11.) What "Salva- 
tion" and what "day" did Paul have in his mind 
when he wrote these words? That is the first 
question for me to answer, and if I cannot answer 
it as he and the Roman Christians would have 
done, I must confess that I know nothing about 
the meaning of the passage. I may use the lan- 
guage of it to describe some situation, past, pres- 
ent, or future, which I may have in my mind, but 
I get at its meaning only as I come to know what 
the situation was which Paul had in his mind 
when he penned it. 

The New Testament writers themselves knew 
how to harness the words of earlier authors to 
the service of their own pens. Examples are 
easily found. The last nine verses of the sec- 
ond chapter of Matthew present three of them — 



16 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

"Out of Egypt I called my Son;" 

"A voice was heard in Ramah, 
Weeping and much lamentation; 
Rachel, weeping for her children, 
Refused all comfort because they were not;" 

and 

"He will be called a Nazarene." 

The first of these passages was taken from 
Hosea 11:1. That prophet, however, had no 
thought of the coming of the child Jesus up from 
Egypt when he wrote it. On the contrary his 
look was backward. His attention was fixed upon 
a most important event in the early history of his 
people, when Jehovah called them as his "Son" 
out of Egypt. Still the words were suited to 
describe precisely the event in the life of Jesus 
which Matthew was recording, and because they 
came up in his mind as he wrote, he used them for 
that purpose. Similarly the language which he 
quoted in connection with his description of 
Herod's slaughter of the innocents, and which 
shows us Rachel, the dearly beloved wife of Israel, 
who had been buried at Bethlehem, weeping for 
her children there ruthlessly put to death, and 
refusing all comfort, was applied by him in a 
very telling way. At the same time we would 
make a very great mistake if we should assume 
that Jeremiah wrote them foreseeing Herod's act. 
The one thing the prophet had in his mind was the 



INTRODUCTION 17 

snatching away of Rachel's children into the expa- 
triation of the Babylonish captivity. 

Finally, "He shall be called a Nazarene" is not 
a quotation at all, but an ingenious adaptation. 
The thing Matthew did here was this. He put an 
historic statement in the future tense that he 
might read into it a wealth of past prophecy. 
None of Israel's seers had foretold that Jesus 
would become a resident or citizen of Nazareth. 
But they had declared that Jehovah's anointed 
one would be despised. They had also said that 
he would be called Netzer, a branch, or germ, or 
sprout; and the root portion of the name Naza- 
reth was Netzer or Natzer. With this fact and 
one or both of these prophecies in his mind Mat- 
thew read their sense into the word, and declared 
that the prophets had said "He shall be called a 
Nazarene," a despised one and, at the same time, 
the one germ or sprout of our race's coming 
greatness. But, as I have stated, no prophet 
had ever predicted that Jesus would reside in the 
town of Nazareth, which is the fact Matthew was 
recording. 

In getting at the meaning of the scriptures, as 
of all other writings, the one question which must 
never be lost sight of is — What did the writer 
have in mind when he penned his words? and not — 
What application can I make of them? — or — 
What sense can I read into them? In the pages 
which follow I shall strive to keep this fact always 
in view, and when dealing with such phrases as 



18 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

"the coming of the Son of Man," "the close of 
the age" and "the last days," shall seek first of 
all to discover what the great teachers who used 
them tried to convey to the minds of their hearers 
and readers by their means. 

I shall also keep in view another fact, namely, 
that a progress in revelation is as evident on the 
pages of the books of the Bible, as the corres- 
ponding progress in knowledge and ideas is in 
the general literature of the world. Men's 
thoughts of God were kept widening. In some 
cases this was as true of the individual teacher as 
it was of the generations that succeeded each 
other. Paul on the subject of the resurrection of 
the dead, and the corresponding change which he 
believed would take place in the living, unti] it 
finally transformed nature itself, is a striking 
example of this. To properly interpret the Bible 
therefore, on any theme, it is necessary not only 
to collate the passages which deal with that point, 
but also to arrange them in the order in which 
they were written, beginning with the earliest. 

"He has made an end of Death, and has brought 
Life and Immortality to light by that Good News, 
of which I was myself appointed a Herald and 
Apostle" (2nd Tim. 1:10, 11) is a word Paul 
wrote of his Lord in the last letter that ever came 
from his pen probably. But who can hope to say 
what lengths and breadths and depths and heights 
these words had for Paul himself unless he will 
study every earlier word of his upon the subject, 



INTRODUCTION 19 

beginning with the first, which is contained in 1 
Thess. 4:13-5:3, and was written perhaps four- 
teen years or more previously. It is all too easy 
to twist the scriptures to one's own undoing as a 
reasonable being. Indeed it would be well for us 
if every time we take the Bible into our hands, 
we would very devoutly say to ourselves — "Here 
there is need for discernment" (Rev. 13:10). 



II 

GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MAN'S SIN 

It is too late a year of our Lord in which to 
entertain the suggestion that there may be some 
defect in the divine righteousness. No one, how- 
ever, need shrink from the idea that there may be 
something defective in his own notions concern- 
ing that righteousness. It may even be desirable 
that most of us should assume that there is. 

More than thirty years ago a preacher so 
young that he was still looking forward to his 
ordination dealt with a phase of our subject in 
these words : — 

"Some scientists have taken the ground that man 
can originate living organisms. They have said, Get 
the right kinds of matter together in the right pro- 
portions, then subject them to the necessary condi- 
tions and operations, and living creatures will result. 
More than once the experiment has been tried. More 
than once, too, men have claimed success — only to 
own to failure afterwards, however. We are not 
yet able to turn dead matter into living. We can- 
not manipulate life, any more than we can weigh 
it with our scales or comprehend it. 

"But imagine, now, that it is possible for men 
versed in science to make living creatures out of dead 

20 



GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 21 

matter. Suppose Mr. Huxley able to do this. Sup- 
pose him able to create beings of many sorts, and 
that it is in his power to produce two creatures, a 
male and a female, from whom would spring a numer- 
ous race. Suppose also that Mr. Huxley has the 
power of seeing all down the future, and of know- 
ing all this race would do and all that would happen 
to it from the beginning to the end of its existence. 
Suppose, too, that he sees that if he should create this 
first pair, it would remain happy for only a brief 
time, and then fall into the deepest suffering and 
degradation, carrying with it all the generations of its 
offspring from the first to the last. 

"Suppose, now, that with all this in his knowledge, 
and without devising any means of alleviating the suf- 
fering, or of counteracting the evil he foresees, Mr. 
Huxley should create that first pair, making them so 
that they might possibly avoid the wrong-doing and 
wretchedness, but knowing absolutely that they would 
not avoid it; what would we think of Mr. Huxley for 
doing it? We would say that it might have been al- 
lowable for him to have created the first pair, but that 
foreseeing the consequences, as he did, it was both un- 
fair and cruel for him to create them so that they 
would give birth to an offspring like their fallen 
selves. Every theologian would condemn him, and 
Arminian and Calvanist alike would brand him 
wretch. 

"But does not this supposed creation of Mr. Hux- 
ley bear an exact analogy to what God's creation of 
man would have been apart from redemption? . . . 

"Let us look more closely into this matter. We say 
God created Adam and Eve able to stand, yet free to 



22 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

fall. Personally they were, therefore, justly held 
guilty for their transgression. God foresaw their fall 
but did not cause it. But turn your eyes to their 
descendants. God fixed two laws upon Adam and 
Eve. The first was, Be parents; the second, Beget 
and bear children like yourselves. After the fall this 
second law became, Beget and bring forth a sinful 
race. 

"Birth into the world would be an unmitigated 
curse apart from redemption. Each child born under 
the circumstances would have had to lay the blame 
somewhere. It could not have laid it upon itself. 
No child has anything to do with its own birth, much 
less with being born sinful and wretched. Neither 
could it have laid the responsibility upon its parents, 
for they would have been as parents are now, under 
law to God himself in the matter, and each birth that 
took place would have occurred, as each birth does 
now, in obedience to His law, written in the very 
nature of both the father and the mother. The in- 
creasing race of men (if the race could have sur- 
vived) would, if they could have known God at all, 
have had to look upon him as a monster, who took de- 
light in confusion, anguish and death. If God had 
created men for such a fate, what sense of justice 
there could have been in his universe under such con- 
ditions would have risen on all sides to curse him to 
his face. That sense of justice would, in hate and 
loathing, have said — "God foreknew that the race 
he thought of creating would be supremely and for- 
ever wretched, and yet he created it !" 

These are plain words and they make it clear 
that man's sin and God's righteousness can never 



GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 23 

be considered apart from each other. So this 
young preacher continued: — 

"I want to say further on this head that while it 
is true, in one sense, that creation was the foundation 
for redemption, it is equally true in another sense, 
that redemption was the foundation for creation. 
We have seen that God could not have withheld re- 
demption from our race, as a whole, without treating 
it unjustly. His wish and purpose were plainly that 
there should be a numerous race, and not simply two 
individuals. His wish for a numerous race, and his 
justice and love, together with his foresight of the 
fall, forced upon Him, as it were, the necessity of a 
redeeming plan. Had his wisdom been unable to de- 
vise such a plan, his love and his justice would have 
held him back from creating man at all. 'That he 
might be just' is one of Paul's own words." 

Continuing, this same young man asked: — 

"Does some one say, You would make redemption 
the vindication of creation? I reply — Yes; I believe 
that to God himself it was and is that. And, as for 
us, it is the only vindication that has reached us. I 
go further still and say, that we cannot yet see how 
even it is a sufficient vindication. Cannot yet see, I 
say. We can believe it now and expect to see it by 
and by. Only that. We walk by faith here, as long 
at least as we continue to believe the scriptural doc- 
trine of endless sin and endless suffering as a pos- 
sibility, if not a certainty, for some." 

These positions are impregnable. Even divine 



24 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

might does not make right. The essential 
demands of justice are not difficult to discern, and 
the Judge of all the earth must surely be at least 
as good as our Huxleys. 

As definite a choice as was ever made by the 
divine mind was that of continuing a sinful race 
upon this planet, and that choice would have been 
as sinful as the race itself, had not his righteous- 
ness made sinful men only that it might redeem 
them. Redemption, therefore, is neither a divine 
afterthought, nor a divine work of supereroga- 
tion, but a work demanded, and entered into, by 
infinite justice. 

The New Testament writers most definitely rec- 
ognize this. The author of The Revelation saw 
Jesus as "the Lamb that has been sacrificed from 
the foundation of the world." (Rev. 13:8.) 
Peter writes of him as at once a sacrifice and a 
ransom for those to whom his letter was ad- 
dressed, and declared that he was "destined for 
this before the beginning of the world." (I Pet. 
1:19, 20.) Paul adds: "This God did to prove 
his righteousness ... as a proof, I repeat, 
at the present time, of his own righteousness, that 
he might be righteous in our eyes, and might pro- 
nounce righteous the man who takes his stand on 
faith in Jesus." (Rom. 3:25, 26.) Elsewhere 
Paul makes it very clear that when God pro- 
nounces a man righteous, "who takes his stand on 
faith in Jesus," that man's faith has already seen 
in Jesus the deliverance from sin itself, which he 



GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 25 

could by no means work out on his own behalf. 
God pronounces righteous only the man whom he, 
at the same time, makes righteous. So in giving 
Jesus to the world, and calling upon all men to 
take their stand on faith in him as their Savior 
from sin itself, He was proving to men that it was 
only "in his forbearance he had passed over the 
sins that men had previously committed" (Rom. 
3:25) ; and that he might, in view of his purpose 
regarding both that past, and the holy and uni- 
versal new order of things he was establishing 
through Jesus ; satisfy all men that he had con- 
tinued to maintain a sinning and suffering race, 
only that he might redeem it from all iniquity 
and exalt it to a glory of righteousness, far be- 
yond all its present powers of comprehension. 

From one of Paul's viewpoints, therefore, the 
atoning work of Christ was God's most potent 
apologia pro vita sua — his most powerful apolo- 
getic. It is easy to see how much such an apolo- 
getic was needed, and how far men still are from 
perceiving its full force. Even as things have 
been under redemption, more than one woman has 
said to her husband, when conditions had been 
rendered all but unendurable, and through no 
guilty act of their own, "Renounce God and die" ; 
and few indeed of the men who have listened to 
such counsel have been Jobs. But the appeal has 
not been made in vain, and gradually it will 
smooth the wrinkles out of all foreheads, and 
steal the bitterness from even life's chief woes. 



26 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, God has re- 
vealed himself as the Trinity — as the Father who 
loves all his afflicted and straying children, and 
sent the Son in whom he could always delight to 
enlighten and bless them; the Son himself as un- 
dertaking the task with a perfect devotion towards 
both his Father and his needy brothers, and as suf- 
fering and dying for them without a murmur, 
though it was their own hatred towards his perfect 
goodness that nailed him to his cross ; and the Holy 
Spirit as the invisible omnipresent and almighty 
friend, instructor and uplifter of all. It was in 
view of this infinite apologetic that Paul exulted 
when he wrote: "God puts his love for us beyond 
all doubt by the fact that Christ died on our 
behalf while we were still sinners." (Rom. 5:8.) 
And the first generation of Christians caught 
but the vision which was held in reserve for our 
whole race before even the world we inhabit was 
launched upon its varied career. 

It will be well for us to notice next that the 
necessity for that divine forbearance towards 
sin which impressed Paul, was one which God 
imposed upon himself, when he became man's 
creator. He chose to create, foreseeing all, and 
knowing that if he created the race, it would, for 
hundreds of generations, be made up of sinners 
incapable of self-redemption. He foreknew that, 
in the very nature of things, as he himself would 
make them, not one child of Adam would be respon- 
sible for his birth into the world with a depraved 



GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS Tt 

nature, which was sure to lead him astray — that 
whatever might or might not be true concerning 
our first parents, this would certainly be true 
of their descendants. He foreknew also that 
apart from continuous enlightenment by himself 
Adam's race would know nothing at all about 
righteousness, and that to save them into right- 
eousness he would have to do a great deal more 
than simply enlighten them — that they would have 
to be created anew, indeed. Deliberately he chose 
such a race for himself — ignorant, that he might 
enlighten it; sinful, that he might make it holy; 
hateful and hating the highest, that he might 
fill it with his own loftiest love. To be forbear- 
ing towards such a race was simply to stand by 
his choice, and go forward under a necessity of 
his own creation. Whatever responsibility has 
stood in association with the inherited ignorance 
and sin of each generation, has been God's, not 
man's. No man and no generation could possibly 
be called to an account for more than the sins, 
which he or it had chosen in the face of a light 
and a help, which made the choice really avoid- 
able. Apart from the work of divine redemp- 
tion, which includes moral enlightenment, that is 
to say, there could be no such thing as moral 
responsibility for any son of Adam. God's very 
forbearance towards men becomes a reality only 
as his redeeming light and aid are consciously and 
willfully rejected. Precisely as far as men are 
without light, or without power to live up to the 



28 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

light they have received, their sin is a missing 
of the mark, or the symptom of a moral disease; 
and their guilt is that of the child, that has in- 
herited from its parents partial blindness, along 
with some other deeply disabling maladies. It is 
its doom to suffer for no fault of its own, and 
because God ordained it should be so. God linked 
sin and suffering together and doomed our race, 
at least after the first pair, with which, accord- 
ing to the Bible, it began, to both; and he made 
the suffering, on both the physical and the moral 
side, the lot of even those who are too young, or 
too ignorant, to choose the wrong which incurs 
the pain or the weakness under which they labor. 
God has loaded the body, the intellect, the affec- 
tions and the will of our race, with the penalties 
he has attached to sin. He has made innocence 
to suffer with guilt in this mystery of his govern- 
ment. 

In the last named fact do we not find the sug- 
gestion that he deals with men differently from the 
standpoint of the individual conscience? For if 
the individual suffers in his innocence as well as 
in his guilt, surely his conscience is left out of the 
account so far. What he endures he suffers as 
a member of the race, and not as a being endowed 
with an individuality which forces him to stand 
out also in an accountability to God which is 
personal and solitary. 

Now what of the New Testament? Has it any 
word concerning such a distinction? Do its 



GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 29 

writers tell us anything about the solidarity of 
the race, on the one hand, and personal responsi- 
bility on the other? Above all, have they, in ad- 
dition, some word that will show us how far, 
in their opinion, God holds the individual man ac- 
countable for the sins of his heart and life? How 
far was sin to them a missing of the mark, or a 
disease of the moral nature, and how far was it 
a deliberate, wickedly-chosen and guilty thing? 

The answer is easy. They faced the situation 
and expressed themselves clearly. Their memory 
of the teaching of Jesus guided them, and their 
grasp of the first principles of justice did the 
rest. They knew that the moral quality of an 
action must be sought for in the purpose from 
which it springs. They knew, too, that the man 
who is not aware that the action he contemplates, 
or the disposition he cherishes, is wrong, can pur- 
pose neither disobedience towards God, nor any- 
thing unrighteous towards his fellow-men, under 
any conditions whatever. So to them ignorance 
excused men and knowledge rendered them cul- 
pable. They believed a man must know he is 
breaking a law he should obey, if he is to be held 
guilty in the act he does, and that the purpose 
must be consciously wrong, if the formal act of 
transgression is to be set down as sinful. Paul, 
for instance, declared that "sin cannot be charged 
against a man where no law exists." (Rom. 
5:13.) And this word, read in the light of Luke 
12:47, 48, and John 15:22, 24, cannot be inter- 



30 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

preted otherwise than as meaning that the place 
where the law must exist, to make the transgres- 
sor of it guilty before God is in the knowledge of 
the transgressor himself. 

Paul made another distinction, which is to be 
found in one of the climaxes of the great classi- 
cal passage on sin in his letter to the Romans. 

"When I do the very thing I want not to do, 
the action is no longer my own, but that of sin 
which is within me." (Chap. 7:17.) Here he 
looks upon sin, not as any proper feature of his 
character, or constituent of his personality, but 
as some foreign thing which has somehow got a 
victorious footing within him, and now acts it- 
self out in spite of him. 

No word truer to human experience than this 
was ever penned. Evil habits are common 
enough, but their commonness does not prevent 
us from being in continual astonishment at their 
power. No boy with his first cigarette between 
his lips, no man taking his first sip of an in- 
toxicating beverage, can be persuaded that so 
simple an act may very soon mean the tighten- 
ing upon him of fetters that he will vainly attempt 
to break. He smiles at every well-meant warn- 
ing, because he feels sure that the strength of his 
own manhood is behind his unchained will to keep 
it forever free. And when he does find himself 
helpless to do more than struggle, he knows that 
his slavery was not self-chosen — that he had 
chosen its very opposite from the start, and had 



GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 31 

scarcely dreamed of what was before him. His 
ignorance was played upon. He had been de- 
ceived and was now being mocked by his foe. 

Let a man face all the sins of his life and defy 
them to hold him any longer in their grip. Let 
your man be one who has never fallen under the 
power of even one of the habits, which we call 
foolish or bad. Give him the most favorable con- 
ditions possible. Let him be a very Saul of Tar- 
sus or a John Wesley, in what the world calls 
rectitude and high ambition. Yet the day will 
come to him when he will cry the cry of the man 
who knows himself to be held in a bitter bondage 
which he never consciously chose, and which he 
has come to loathe with a miserable helpless loath- 
ing, that can scarcely voice itself intelligibly. 
He will feel as if all the sin of all his dead 
grandsires had come out of the dark and ghastly 
past, to force him down with cruel bony hands, 
when he is fully resolved to step upward, instead, 
into the light of a worthy morning. And the 
feeling about his dead grandsires will be true to 
the facts, and no mere "as if." 

"In Adam all died." Heredity can be terrible. 
Each man is the net resultant of all the forces 
that produced him, plus that God-given, better, 
feebly-aspiring something, which he knows to be 
himself — himself bound to a dead body which he 
can by no means shake off — himself crying — 
"Miserable man that I am! Who will deliver 
me?" 



32 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Now what is the fact behind this fact? When 
a man can truly say of his wrong-doing: "It 
is no longer I that do it," what are we bound to 
affirm besides? When we remember that the fact 
of his helplessness was the same before he real- 
ized it as it was afterwards, what are we to say? 
This — that up to the very limits of his helpless- 
ness, he is no more to blame for not doing his 
proper work in God's world, than is the strong 
man whose system has been invaded and rendered 
helpless by the typhoid bacillus. Further, his 
very delusions are themselves a part of his dis- 
ease, and he cannot escape until his malady has 
been met and mastered by a delivering power 
stronger than either itself or him, and he is being 
led up to health and vigor. 

To the conclusion that the place where the law 
of God must exist, to make its transgressor guilty 
before him, is in the knowledge of the transgres- 
sor himself, we must now add, therefore, this 
other word, that up to the very limits of each 
man's helplessness to avoid his transgressions, the 
divine .righteousness must hold him personally 
guiltless. The victim of typhoid cannot fairly 
be held accountable for the full work of a healthy 
man. Sin is, in one of its phases, a disease for 
the existence of which no man, since Adam, can 
be held responsible. This is New Testament 
teaching. And, according to that same teach- 
ing, it was the darkness of our ignorance that 
brought the Light of the World to our relief, the 



GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 33 

awfulncss of our disease that brought the great 
Physician to our side, and our helplessness in our 
bitter bondage that brought the Mighty Deliv- 
erer to our rescue. 

Over against this obligation of God to man, 
self-imposed and self-recognized, lies our own ob- 
ligation to him. Each man knows himself to be 
individually responsible to God and feels that 
he has been a sinner against him on his own 
account. This consciousness of personal guilt 
arises out of the fact that God has been known 
to us as the God of Salvation from both our sins 
and sinfulness to a greater extent than we have 
availed ourselves of his sanctifying grace. But 
the bitterest cry that breaks from human lips 
and lifts itself to Heaven, is wrung from human 
hearts, not by this guilt, but in view of that help- 
lessness through sin's disease or bondage, which 
makes the life of righteousness impossible without 
Heaven's help. Our joy is that He who made 
and maintains the need for infinite help has be- 
stowed that aid from the ilart, and with grow- 
ingly glorious results. 

Here, then, we have reached this one clear fact, 
that the plan of redemption, in which the Incarna- 
tion was wrapped up from the beginning, found 
its primeval necessity in the righteousness of the 
Infinite Love. 



Ill 

JESUS AS A SIGN 

A sign is some visible thing which represents 
an invisible reality greater than itself. Christian- 
ity has three of these signs. Two of them we 
call sacraments. They are Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper. In baptism the outward and 
visible act of applying water to an individual who 
has been presented for the purpose of undergo- 
ing the rite, represents an invisible act indefinitely 
greater than itself. So also the visible act of 
one who partakes of the Lord's supper repre- 
sents an indefinitely greater invisible act. 

Water is invaluable as a food and also as an 
instrument of cleansing. Associate it with a 
cleansing agent in a Turkish bath institute and 
it means physical cleansing for all who come and 
submit to certain conditions. But associate water 
with one who is authorized to use it in baptism, 
and let him apply it to the persons of those 
who are presented for the rite, and the act of 
the baptizer represents that invisible act of the 
Holy Spirit, by which He purifies the hearts of 
those who believe in God as the God of their 
personal salvation through Jesus Christ. 

Bread is invaluable as a sustainer of physical 
34 



JESUS AS A SIGN 35 

life, and unfermentcd wine is the very life of the 
grape — the very life of the grape plant itself, 
indeed, since it produces the seed, or plants in 
embryo, of all future vineyards. Unfermentcd 
grape juice and bread taken together, therefore, 
are a sign of, or represent, physical life and its 
sustenance. And when you set portions of them 
apart for use in connection with the spiritual 
religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the rite 
which we call his Supper, they then represent him 
as at once the Spiritual life and the spiritual 
nourishment of all those who continously receive 
him by obedient faith, just as obediently they 
partake of the bread and wine themselves in the 
Supper. 

But before either of these symbols could be 
chosen on earth, one had to be chosen in heaven. 
The thing it was to represent was the divine love 
for our sinful race. It had to be something that 
could actually set forth the infinite thing that was 
to be represented. It had to be something also 
that even the worst man could understand and 
appreciate. The use of water in baptism could 
be understood and appreciated as symbolizing 
moral and spiritual cleansing. Partaking of 
bread and wine in the Lord's Supper could be un- 
derstood and appreciated as showing forth the 
reception of Christ as the inbringer and sustainer 
of spiritual life in those who believe in him. But 
what could stand as a symbol of that love of 
the triune Jehovah, which stoops and suffers and 



36 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

dies, that it may win bad men to holiness and 
peace and enduring riches? Could men have 
guessed? 

The divine solution of the problem, when it 
first met human eyes, was a babe. Rut this babe 
would have been no solution at all, if it had died in 
childhood. For then it would have represented 
innocence, apart from conscious intelligence and 
personal choice, and God in himself cannot be 
truly represented thus. Each babe is God-like in 
its possibilities, but a babe must live on for years 
if these possibilities are ever to become the actual 
facts of character, which men can see and ad- 
mire and love. The son of Mary, lying there in 
the manger, receives homage, because the spirit 
of prophecy has already seen him as the glorious 
man he afterwards became. It is not the babe, 
but the man the babe so soon became, that is 
approached with bended knee. Could it have been 
true that he was to die in infancy, the spirit of 
prophecy would never have been awakened con- 
cerning him, and he would have gone to a grave 
that would in a few short years have been name- 
less and forgotten. The worship of a babe, as 
a babe, is no true part of Christianity. 

Man is at once a common being on this planet, 
and the most exalted in his attributes of all its 
inhabitants. So high is he in comparison with 
every other earthly being, that he is arbiter of 
the destinies of them all. One man is of more 
worth than every creature besides. So man is the 



JESUS AS A SIGN 37 

highest being that man can become acquainted 
with upon this planet, short of God himself. And 
if God had to be seen by bad men, not directly 
but through another, that other had himself to 
be a man, and a man worthy of the God for whom 
he was to stand. So the babe was born and grew 
to years as the Son of God and the Son of Man. 
And so utterly human was he that those who grew 
up with him, in the same home even, never dreamed 
of him as being essentially different from them- 
selves. He began his public career and gathered 
disctiplcs about him. They were impressed by 
his superiority, but after his transfiguration, 
which three of them witnessed, and even after 
he came back to them from the dead, he was still 
so truly human to them, that they asked him if 
he was not now at last going into their politics 
to restore the kingdom and place Israel at the 
very forefront of the nations. 

We sometimes grieve over this blindness of 
theirs, as we call it. But after all they were not 
blind to the main fact. In Jesus they saw God. 
They saw he was human but they saw also that 
he represented their God — that his human life 
was a sign of the life of God, and, at length, that 
it stood for every infinite attribute of God, and 
specifically for the love that stoops and suffers 
that it may win bad men out of sin into holiness, 
out of trouble into peace, and out of poverty 
into wealth. 

They saw, too, that he was a sign of God not 



38 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

as in his heaven making all well with his world, 
but of God among men, dealing with everything 
on the spot. Instead of saying as they looked 
upon him, and as later they remembered him, 
"God's in his heaven," they said, God's in his 
world — -"Immanuel, God is with us!" 

Jesus Christ, the man who was the Son of 
God was not himself an infinite fact, but a finite 
one, and painfully finite. He was limited on 
every side, and^ is limited still, though less so than 
when here in the flesh. His sinless and wholly 
beneficient career, standing before his first fol- 
lowers in its solitary grandeur, made them say 
that God was here in one life. And when the 
Holy Spirit came upon themselves, and then upon 
the sinful men to whom they preached him as 
Savior, and soon upon Gentiles as well as Jews, 
they saw that his life of seeking the lost had 
represented the universal presence of God here 
doing the same thing. 

"I know not where his islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care. ,, 

This is the vast lesson that comes to us through 
the incarnation. The babe in the manger is in 
itself a fact of deep interest, but if this fact had 
stood alone, it would never have won power 
enough to get itself heralded down the ages, 
nor would there ever have been a Christmas or 



JESUS AS A SIGN 39 

a year of our Lord. Babe and man, Jesus Christ 
is a visible sign that represents an infinite reality, 
and that reality is the universally present love 
of God for bad men. Luke represents Jesus him- 
self as declaring that, just as Jonah was, in spite 
of himself, a sign of God's holy love towards the 
wicked, but repentant, Ninevites, so he himself was 
a sign of that same love towards the men of his 
generation. (Luke 11:30.) And, according to 
the fourth gospel he continually kept this fact 
at the front. 

He was great — so great that his early follow- 
ers felt it was in every way fitting that he should 
speak of the lowliest member of his kingdom as 
greater than John the Baptist — the greatest 
prophet of the olden time. (Luke 7:28.) But 
his greatness both as helper and teacher was seen 
most of all in the fact that he was a sign, and 
represented an invisible authority, help and wis- 
dom which were indefinitely greater than his own. 
So he is brought before us in the fourth gospel 
as saying: "The Son can do nothing of himself; 
he does only what he sees the Father doing." 
(John 5:19.) "When you have lifted up the 
Son of Man, then you will understand that I 
am what I am, and that I do nothing of myself, 
but that I say just what the Father has taught 
me. ... I always do what pleases him." 
(John 8:28, 29.) "The Father is greater than 
I." (John 14:28.) 

Such language can bear but one 



40 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

It teaches us that the early followers of Jesus 
saw their chief cause of joy in the fact that 
he represented in the visible a corresponding 
invisible personality greater than himself — 
greater in authority, in might, in knowledge 
and in goodness. To them he was God with- 
in the limits of the highest possible manhood of 
his time, and represented the infinite deity. He 
was a sign, and, according to the New Testament 
writers, the precise fact which he came to repre- 
sent was the continuous presence of the holy lov- 
ing God among men. These writers did not hold 
the doctrine of an absentee deity, but of an omni- 
present God, who could not be absent anywhere 
for even one moment, if he wished. 

This comes out very clearly in Matthew 1 :23 
where we learn that the early church applied to 
Jesus the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. The one 
thing Isaiah was seeking to impress upon Ahaz 
was that God's abiding presence in Jerusalem 
made an alliance with Assyria unnecessary and an 
impertinence. When Ahaz obstinately refused to 
be convinced, the prophet burst in upon him with 
the declaration that God would force a sign upon 
him, and that the sign would be this. While he 
was still trusting in the armed hosts of Assyria, 
one absolutely a non-combatant, a young girl- 
mother, would so realize the protecting presence 
of God for herself and her babe, and for all the 
other babes and mothers of Judah, that she would 
name her child Immanuel — God is with us. To 



JESUS AS A SIGN 41 

her that presence would remain as the greatest 
fact of all for the quieting of her fears ; and it 
would also be the greatest fact of all for Judah as 
a whole. Such protection and deliverance as re- 
mained possible in connection with the unbeliev- 
ing and perilous policy of Ahaz and his foolish 
fear-haunted advisers, would arise out of the 
infinite fact for which that child would stand, 
as long as he bore the name his mother would 
give him. Centuries passed. Ahaz and all his 
royal successors to David's throne passed also. 
Another maiden was to be the mother of a son, 
and Matthew says that before the child was born, 
an angelic messenger informed the maiden's 
betrothed husband that this prophecy of Isaiah 
would be fulfilled over again in this new child, 
because they would call him, too, "Immanuel — 
a word which means, God is with us." And Luke 
says that when, after the child was born, they 
carried him to the temple as the first born son 
of the family, an aged prophet named Simeon 
took him into his arms and said: "This child is 
appointed to be ... a sign. . . ." 
(Luke 2:34.) 

Matthew and Luke recorded these things be- 
cause the church had come to realize that Jesus 
stood for the fact that the invisible God is every- 
where present for the salvation of men. That 
presence meant political or temporal deliverance 
in Isaiah's day, but to the Christian believers for 
whom "Matthew" and "Luke" were written, it 



42 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

meant every spiritual good their hearts could 
crave, either for themselves or others. 

To show how large this fact bulked in the 
thought of the apostolic church, we may note a 
few other New Testament words. "Members of 
God's household," is one of Paul's descriptions 
of the body of Christian believers at Ephesus. 
(Eph. 2:19.) But these believers were only the 
same in privilege as all the other believers of that 
and succeeding times. God at home with his 
children, or God's children at home with him, is 
the thought conveyed to the mind by this word. 

That they thought of God as really dwelling 
here, with his people as his children, is made very 
plain in 2nd Cor. 6:16-18, where Paul makes the 
fact the basis of a call to the deepest worship 
and the highest possible holiness. 

Finally, in Chapter 21 of the Revelation the 
fact is presented in the most inclusive way. "And 
I saw the Holy City, Jerusalem, descending new 
out of Heaven from God, like a bride adorned in 
readiness for her husband. And I heard a loud 
voice from the throne, which said — 'See! the tab- 
ernacle of God is set up among men. God will 
dwell among them, and they will be his people, and 
God himself will be among them, and he will wipe 
away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 21:2-4.) 
He showed me Jerusalem, the Holy City, 
descending out of heaven from God, filled with 
the glory of God . . . (verse 10). 

"And I saw no temple there, for the Lord, our 



JESUS AS A SIGN 43 

God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. 
The city has no need of 'the sun or the moon to 
shine upon it, for the glory of God illuminated 
it,' and its lamp was the Lamb. 'The nations will 
walk by the light of it; and the kings of the earth 
bring their glory into it. Its gates shall never 
be shut by day,' and there will be no night there. 
And men will bring the glory and honor of the 
nations into it. (Verses 22-26.) . . . 

"And the angel showed me 'a river of the Water 
of Life,' as clear as crystal, issuing from the 
throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of 
the street of the city. On each side of the river 
was a tree of Life which bore twelve kinds of fruit, 
yielding its fruit each month ; and the leaves of the 
tree were for the healing of the nations. 'Every- 
thing that is accursed will cease to be.' The 
throne of God and of the Lamb will be within it, 
and his servants will worship him ; they will see his 
face and his name will be in their foreheads." 
(Rev. 22: 1-4.) All this splendid imagery, 
drawn largely from the older prophets, conveyed 
one clear message to the hearts of the early Chris- 
tians. God, as in Christ, was omnipresent 
among men, "reconciling the world to himself, not 
reckoning men's offences against them." (2nd 
Cor. 5:19.) The glory of his holy love shone 
forth in and through his church, enlightening, 
alluring and claiming men as his own, and bless- 
ing them with every good; and that glory would 
shine on till all peoples were won, and the whole 



44 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

race found itself permanently rejoicing in the 
presence of God himself, and in the possession of 
every bounty in his gift. And Jesus Christ, the 
Lamb, was already the sign and pledge of it all. 
(Rom. 8:32.) 



IV 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 

Each true man is always in the making. His 
making begins centuries before his birth and con- 
tinues as long as he consciously chooses the bet- 
ter instead of the worse and the higher good in 
succession to the lower. Our Cromwells and Lin- 
colns, our Shakespeares and Goethes, our Luthers 
and Wesley s, our Darwins and Wallaces and Hux- 
leys and Haeckels, our Hugos and Dickenses, our 
Jameses and Bergsens have not sprung from the 
Veddahs of Ceylon, the African Bushmen or the 
Australian "Blacks." Heredity of race is a 
mighty factor in human affairs, and a race must 
itself have arrived at greatness before it can 
produce the intellectual, moral and spiritual 
giants of the world. 

Jesus sprang from God's spiritual aristocracy, 
from a race that knew him, had fellowship with 
him, and rejoiced in his righteousness and his 
love, till their intellects and imaginations guided 
their pens into the production of a religious litera- 
ture incomparable at once in its grandeur and its 
sweetness, its sublimity and its tenderness. Of 
Israel it has well been said that "the voices of 
her seers and singers sound silvery and soft 

45 



46 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

through the centuries." And it is quite as true, 
on the other hand, that the lightnings and thun- 
der peals of her Sinai awe men's hearts at all the 
ends of the world. Jesus himself recognized the 
fact that the beginnings of his manhood were to 
be found as far back as Abraham at least. He 
sprang from no one of the peoples that were 
"far off," but from the one people that was 
"near." (Eph. 2:17.) Whatever, therefore, re- 
mains to be told besides, it is certainly true that 
all the available advantages of the religious and 
spiritual sort, derivable from a given race of men, 
were made the personal inheritance of Jesus. No 
other race existing upon the planet at the time, or 
that had ever existed upon it, could have conferred 
half as much. If the Greek stood supreme in 
purely intellectual acumen or subtlety, and the 
Roman in his genius for government, the Jew 
was still more a master in things pertaining to 
the spirit. Jesus was of the tribe of Judah and 
"belonged to the family and house of David." 
(Luke 2:4.) It may also be said in passing that 
all that is true of Jesus in this respect is true, 
too, of John the Baptist, only John sprang from 
the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron. (Luke 
1:15.) 

Three other things besides race are worthy of 
consideration in connection with the birth of every 
child. These are immediate parentage, prenatal 
influences and environment. Taking these up in 
the order in which I have just named them, and 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 47 

leaving the scientific question of parthenogenesis 
for discussion in another place, I may note first 
of all that Joseph and Mary are introduced to 
us as among the most spiritually minded of their 
pious race. In them the animal instincts and 
passions are under the strictest control, and their 
ruling desires and motives are drawn from the 
will of God as that will touches them individually, 
rather than as it reaches them in a general way 
through the pages of their scriptures and the 
voices of their religious instructors. They are 
personally and particularly consecrated to all 
that he may at any time reveal to them as duty. 
They are living, that is to say, in conscious, vital, 
sanctifying and informing relations with the di- 
vine Spirit, just as were Zecharias and Elizabeth 
and those aged frequenters of the temple at Jeru- 
salem, Simeon and Anna. In short, no parents 
could have been found for Jesus to excel in moral 
and religious character those who are brought 
before us by the two New Testament writers who 
described them. 

However the Church may finally decide the 
question of the Virgin Birth, Joseph's relation to 
the child was very important before it was born 
as well as afterwards, for he stood at least in 
loco parentis to it in the most intimate way for 
weeks or months before he took his young wife to 
Bethlehem for the enrollment, and incidentally the 
accouchment. Where the relations of a husband 
to his wife are of the ordinary kind and he is 



48 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the father of the child that is to be born, the 
moral and spiritual atmosphere in which he lives 
his life, whether it is positively good or positively 
bad, constitutes no inconsiderable part of those 
influences of the prenatal sort which are helping 
to give character and bias to the nature of his 
offspring. The constant presence in a home of a 
peculiarly stealthy imbecile has been known to 
prenatally blast more than one child's life, through 
its effects upon the imagination and general nerv- 
ous condition of the mother. A mother often 
transfers to her unborn infant's body the out- 
ward things which impress her mind, or indelible 
marks to represent them, and has been known to 
convey to it in this way, and to an extraordinary 
extent, both the outward appearance and low 
mentality of a bear or other animal, by which 
she has been startled at some critical moment. 
Jaundice, through one sight of a person suffer- 
ing from it, has been communicated with such 
force and effect that the child was born only to 
die of the malady in a few days, while the mother 
herself remained healthy and vigorous, or too 
little affected by the disease to show any appreci- 
able symptoms of it. Such a case came under 
my own notice about four years ago. 

It is related of Constantin Von Tischendorf 
that the remarkable visual powers which enabled 
him to deal successfully with ancient manuscripts, 
which to most others were undecipherable were 
probably due to the fact that his mother, alarmed 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 49 

at the peril created for her unborn child through 
the effect produced upon her mind by a sight 
she had had of some blind person, instantly 
passed into unceasing prayer that it might never- 
theless be born capable of seeing. This has been 
regarded as a case in which the ruling mental 
state of a mother resulted in the double achieve- 
ment of superior organs of sight, to begin with, 
and then the ambition to use them to the utmost 
in the service of that God to whom she had made 
her continuous petition on the child's behalf. 
Prenatal influences supplied by mothers must be 
classed among the primary things in the lives of 
their children. 

Considered from this point of view the stories 
of Matthew and Luke are of very deep interest 
for students of the life of Jesus. If they are 
historical in their central testimony, his concep- 
tion by Mary was brought about through the in- 
visible and physically unfelt embrace or over- 
shadowing of the Holy Spirit. All of conscience 
and the religious emotions of which her fine 
nature was capable was aroused in the case, while 
everything pertaining to sexual passion was either 
stilled or else left slumbering where it had never 
yet been awakened. The one pleasure offered her 
was that of motherhood for God, and this was 
bound up with the terrible peril of being publicly 
disgraced as a consequence by a man to whom 
she had already been betrothed. In this unre- 
served consecration to God she was soon joined 



50 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

by Joseph himself, and in that dedication of body 
as well as spirit they both continued until the 
child Jesus was heralded by angels near Bethle- 
hem, and' by "a star in the East." Thus the deal- 
ings of the Holy Spirit with the thoughts and 
purposes of Mary and afterwards of Joseph, 
must have filled her with such a sense of God, 
and of submission to and joy in his will, as con- 
stituted the divinest of all possible prenatal in- 
fluences for the child she was to bear. If we re- 
ject the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as 
a fable of the pious imagination, we must at least 
accept this, unless we reject also the doctrine 
of the Virgin Birth itself; in which case the in- 
fluence of heredity in this instance would remain 
to be emphasized, of course. 

Heredity and prenatal influence — if the Son of 
God actually became a man, and not the mere 
phantasm of a man, to ignore these two potent 
factors in each human life is to blink out of sight 
matters which are essential to anything like a 
complete understanding of the elements which 
entered into the personal inheritance and original 
endowment of Jesus. 

Coming now to the early environment of Jesus 
the first thing to be taken into account is the 
fact that he was through all his first years under 
the immediate guidance of the strong common- 
sense and spiritually instructed piety of Joseph 
and Mary themselves. And if the visits of the 
shepherds and the Magi, and the flight into 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 51 

Egypt and return are not legends, Mary and 
Joseph were specially impressed, after his birth 
as well as before, regarding the honor and the 
obligation which had been thrust upon them of 
bringing up this child in the most particular 
way for God. This gave a seriousness and ear- 
nestness to their lives which must have been dis- 
tinctly felt by their acquaintances, but most of 
all by him, with his highly sensitive mind and con- 
science. That they were faithful to their duty 
and opportunity from the first is made clear 
by the accounts of his circumcision, his presenta- 
tion in the temple at Jerusalem at the end of 
Mary's days of seclusion, when the spirit of 
prophecy in Simeon and Anna woke to such glow- 
ing expression, and his presentation again as a 
Son of the Law at the age of twelve years. What 
his home had already been made to him came out 
in several ways on this occasion. In the first place 
the boy Jesus stands before us so deeply inter- 
ested in questions of religion that he forgets the 
arrangements for the home journey through the 
liveliness of his thoughts in this direction. When 
Joseph and Mary after missing him returned to 
the city in search of him, "they found him in the 
Temple Courts, sitting among the teachers, now 
listening to them, now asking them questions, 
with all who listened to him marvelling at his 
intelligence and his answers." (Luke 2:46, 47.) 
In reply to their chiding he spoke to them of 
the supreme attractions of his Father's House in 



52 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

words which, if they mystified them, yet caused 
them to see at once that he was not casting off 
their authority or despising their care or their 
instructions, but that he had come to think of 
God as his Father, quite probably through some 
word Mary herself had dropped in his ear con- 
cerning a difference between his origin and that 
of his brothers and sisters, and which she had at 
least for the moment forgotten. Finally taking 
him to his home again they found him obedient 
during still other years, while "he grew in wis- 
dom and gained the blessing of God and men." 
(Luke 2:51, 52.) 

His home was undoubtedly a great instrument 
in his making. It must be remembered, however, 
that this house did not exist apart from the 
synagogue where Mary and Joseph worshiped 
their God and studied his word in company with 
their neighbors, taking Jesus with them from Sab- 
bath to Sabbath and, when his age warranted it, 
encouraging him to take his part in the exercises 
and discussions. Every man who had definite 
thoughts of his own and some ability to express 
them would find his opportunity to speak in his 
synagogue, and the more a man's utterances ap- 
pealed to his fellow students of the scriptures, the 
oftener he would be looked to to address them. 
It can scarcely have been otherwise than that 
Jesus developed his deep acquaintance with the 
Old Testament writings and his supreme gifts 
as a teacher quite largely through the use he 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 53 

made of his opportunities in this same synagogue. 

Added to the home and synagogue there were 
the carpenter's shop and the town, with the broken 
heights surrounding- the basin-like site. What- 
ever can be gained in precision of thought by 
means of manual training, and in conscience 
towards the public in connection with years of 
constant endeavor to give it full value for its 
money in suitable materials and work accurately 
and faithfully done, Jesus got out of that carpen- 
ter's shop. In it, too, he met his fellow townsmen 
in a more informal and intimate way than perhaps 
anywhere else. There they uncovered their 
thoughts and feelings in the most unconventional 
ways and approached and discussed the questions 
in which they were interested, with the least pos- 
sible of reserve. Whether working in the pres- 
ence of another or watching another work has 
the greater power of provoking the confidences 
of self-revelation, who shall say? And the man 
who has nothing evil to hide bears with him the 
constant challenge to others to hide nothing from 
him. In this carpenter's shop Jesus learned very 
fast what was in men, and how to read their hearts 
by means of the tones of their voices, their flit- 
ting changes in facial expression, their uncon- 
scious gestures, and their general bearing from 
time to time, till at length he observed and judged 
as by intuition and knew his man almost, if not 
quite, at a glance. 

There was one characteristic of his fellow 



54 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Galileans, which Jesus counted a good thing even 
in Nazareth. This was their readiness to die for 
their country and their religion. Is it too much 
to say that to live among them was to drink in 
that spirit of patriotism which, being religious at 
the same time that it was political, was also the 
splendid spirit of the martyr? So with his un- 
sullied purity and deeper spiritual insight it was 
impossible for him to grow up otherwise than as 
the strongest and most unselfish patriot of them 
all. They told him of their expectations touch- 
ing the early coming of their Messiah to free them 
from the yoke of Rome, and his eyes kindled as 
he listened. At first nothing was clear to his 
mind but the fact that the prophecies must be 
fulfilled, and that the time was near. He no more 
knew on which side God's anointed would arise, 
nor on what precise lines he would proceed with 
his work when he did appear, than his neighbors 
did. But no one felt so deeply as he, or studied 
as he did the words of the prophets about the 
Coming One. 

By and by both the shop and the town grew 
too narrow for the tumult of his thoughts, and 
he was often under the open sky alone, drinking 
almost unconsciously the lessons which the lily 
and the growing grains and the grasses, the 
beasts of the field and the birds of the air, the 
shadowed gorge and the towering height, the 
glory of the rising and setting sun and of the 
nightly sk}^, the clouds bathed in sunlight, chas- 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 55 

ing each other in light fleeciness across the face 
of the moon, or gathering blackness and bursting 
in loud storm upon the world, have to teach the 
willing hearted. His Father spoke to him through 
nature, as well as through man and through the 
scriptures. 

Probably Jesus visited Jerusalem from time to 
time in connection with the great yearly festivals, 
and as he grew somewhat familiar with both it 
and the people along the road or roads by which 
he journeyed back and forth, became more and 
more deeply convinced that the great basal need 
everywhere was moral and spiritual, and that no 
political movement or achievement could be much 
worth while to the Messiah, or anyone else, until 
this need was met. Brooding thus there some- 
where came to him a day in which his heart al- 
most stopped its beating, while he listened to a 
voice coming out of that Infinite, which is al- 
ways nearness as well as distance, and saying — 
You yourself are the One for whose coming your 
people wait. Whether this voice came to him be- 
bore he learned that his cousin John was already 
heralding the Coming One, who shall say? All 
we are sure of is that the voice was insistent and 
accompanied by such authority that he yielded, 
sure that it was no other than that of his Father. 
Meantime during all these years he had been 
building up such a piety as had made him a 
recognized pattern among the good, and probably 
also an offense to the wrongly disposed about 



56 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

him. When has it ever been different with the 
wholly consecrated ones of our earth ? And would 
it not be most so in the case of the incomparable 
man? Accordingly when Jesus presented him- 
self at the Jordan for baptism by John, he was 
immediately met by the strongest possible testi- 
mony to his own spiritual attainments. John, who 
had declared of the Coming One beforehand — 
"I am not worthy to stoop down and unfasten his 
sandals" (Mk. 1 :7) delayed Jesus now with 
the word — "It is I who need to be baptized by 
you; why then do you come to me?" and Jesus 
had to overrule his objections by insisting: "Let 
it be so for the present, since it is fitting for us 
thus to satisfy every claim of religion." (Matt. 
3:14, 15.) 

The point which stands out clearly here is that 
in the making of Jesus the supreme factor was 
always the revealed will of God. Both John and 
Jesus were moving on lines which were indicated 
to themselves alone, to begin with. Two things 
had to be made plain to John — first that the Mes- 
siah was somewhere in Israel and about to be re- 
vealed and then that he was the one man to act the 
part of his forerunner and Herald ; while Jesus 
had to become convinced that he was himself the 
Messiah and in duty bound as such to go to John 
for Baptism. Neither was, or could have been, 
induced to do what he did until he was satisfied 
that his inwardly received instructions were from 
God and unmistakable; and always afterwards 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 57 

each spoke of himself as one who had been sent 
by God to say and do the very things, which he 
was both defending and emphasizing when he made 
this claim. It is also true that each took the step 
first required of him, with no precise knowledge 
as to what his second step would be. The con- 
secration of Jesus to the work of his Messiahship 
was, therefore, an all-embracing act, as far as 
his own individual life was concerned, and in- 
cluded duties and experiences of many sorts which 
he was to perceive and face only as his career 
developed. A consecration of this kind is not 
entered into excepting through a faith in God, 
which commits everything for good and all to his 
almighty wisdom' and love, and looks to and trusts 
him for guidance and all desirable protection! 
from day to day ; and nothing can be so humbling 
and, at the same time, so exalting to the human 
spirit as this. In myself I am nothing, but in 
my God I am always fully informed and duly 
strengthened for my tasks as they arise, was 
the testimony of Jesus from first to last. Al- 
ways he had a sufficiency, yet was never self-suffi- 
cient ; he was always complete, yet never per- 
fected. For the task of one day was constantly 
being succeeded by the more difficult task of the 
next, and it was his, as it is ours, to receive wis- 
dom to see and courage to do only in the measure 
demanded by the conditions of each given time. 
His career was always being made for him and 
he for his career. That it was not, because it 



58 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

could not have been otherwise with him who was 
"in all points made like his brothers" (Heb. 2:17) 
that he might become "the Leader and Perfect 
Example of our faith" (Heb. 12:2) is one of the 
claims put forward by the writer of the New 
Testament letter to the Hebrews. 

Another thing, which as a matter of course 
entered into the making of Jesus, was a special 
divine enduement for the purposes of the work 
which it was his to do. This enduement is rep- 
resented as having been given him in addition to 
all that he had received for the development and 
maturing of his sinless manhood, and for reach- 
ing the decisive conclusion that he himself was the 
Coming One whom John was announcing in com- 
plete ignorance as to his identity. Another 
point clearly indicated is that Jesus, realizing 
his need of additional divine aid, left the water 
with which he had been baptized, praying as he 
advanced, and was then baptized with the Holy 
Spirit. And the next record is that it was 
through the influence of this enduement rather 
than of his own motion, that he very soon with- 
drew to the wilds to battle with and overcome 
those popular ideas concerning the Messiah in 
the midst of which he had grown up, and which, 
had he been guided by them, would have blighted 
his career by ruining his personal character and 
losing him the favor of God. No less than this 
is implied in the three answers which at last he 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 59 

was able to draw from the heart of the scriptures 
which he knew so well — 

1st. "It is not on bread alone that man is to 
live, but on every word that comes from the 
mouth of God." 

2nd. "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God." 

3rd. "Thou shalt do homage to the Lord thy 
God, and worship him only." 

Each of these shows how strictly personal he 
felt his battle was, and that he had been drawn 
into a tremendous struggle for the integrity 
before God of his own manhood. The principle 
upon which he acted was that there is no genuine 
integrity whatever which does not include all that 
God demands, and that a man can really serve 
his people in the capacity of leader only as he 
ignores or rejects everything in their ideals which 
is not in harmony with God's revealed will. The 
fierceness of the battle he waged in spite of the 
richness and freshness of his divine enduement 
(or was it in a sense because of this enduement?) 
is evidenced by the forty days of fasting credited 
to him in the accounts we have of it. It was no 
set mechanical fast such as John's disciples and 
the Pharisees kept, but one of the natural, be- 
cause strictly spiritual, sort. The combat was so 
severe and continuous that he had no attention 
to spare for the calls of hunger, until his victory 
was finally won. 



60 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Here then is another factor which entered into 
the making of Jesus, according to his biographers. 
The fine unbreakable steel of his spirit was forged 
in the fiercest fires of temptation, that it 1 might be 
truly tempered in the sovereign, holy and loving 
will of his Father. His biographers make much 
of this fact. They point out again and again 
that he who was "in all points made like his broth- 
ers," was also "in all points tempted in like man- 
ner with them." (Heb. 4:15.) And they most 
distinctly link the idea of suffering with this fact 
of temptation. "He himself suffered under temp- 
tation" (Heb. 2:18) is the ground on which the 
writer of the letter to the Hebrews bases his teach- 
ing that he is now "a merciful as well as faithful 
High Priest in man's relations with God." And 
he plainly declares besides that this was one of 
the ends kept distinctly in view by the Father 
through the whole process. He even goes fur- 
ther and states that, since the Son of God was a 
man, there was no other way, because it is only 
through having himself suffered by having been 
tempted, that any man can be brought into a 
genuine or intelligent sympathy with those who 
are tempted. Indeed he startles us by at least 
seeming to go farther still, and to state by impli- 
cation that the same sort of necessity exists in 
the nature of God himself; and that the incarna- 
tion has as one of its ends the building up of an 
intelligent and particular sympathy with men in 
the very heart of the divine Father. And he leaves 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 61 

us asking whether the sympathy of God with men 
has not always been the mighty living thing which 
was more than guessed of old, because the incar- 
nation was a fact in the divine heart "before the 
creation of the universe," when, as Paul assured 
the Ephesians, they "were chosen in their union 
with Christ." (Eph. 1:4.) According to these 
writers one thing is quite certain. All the 
thought and feeling of God touching our race 
was from the very first bound up with all he pur- 
posed and felt concerning the incarnation. The 
two were absolutely inseparable, and the heart of 
God could not have been what it has always been, 
had this not been so. 

The ministry of suffering in the making of 
Jesus is still further emphasized by the writer of 
"Hebrews." So it is perhaps from the view-point 
of his declarations that the fact can be best ap- 
proached. It may be enough to quote these two 
words from this author to show how definitely he 
thought that Jesus was gradually fitted for the 
place which he now holds and the power which he 
wields in connection with the divine scheme for the 
redemption of our race, and what an important 
part his sufferings played in the process : 

"It is indeed fitting that God, for whom and 
through whom all things exist, should, when lead- 
ing many sons to glory, make the author of their 
salvation perfect through suffering (Heb. 2:10); 
and 

"Son though he was he learnt obedience from 



m A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

his sufferings ; and being made perfect, he be- 
came toi all those who obey him the source of eter- 
nal salvation." (Heb. 5:8, 9.) 

The fitness of a person for any given office or 
vocation must always depend first upon what he 
definitely knows, and secondly upon what he really 
is. Now no man can ever know more than he has 
had the time and opportunity to learn, nor can 
anyone be strong and capable, or recognized as 
such, who has not been subjected to appropriate 
tests. To understand and appreciate the needs 
of men one must not only be a man himself, but 
must also have endured the sorest trials through 
which they pass. For he can know these dis- 
tresses for what they actually are only through 
having experienced them. And if a man's work 
is to be that of relieving and comforting his fel- 
lows, this is the only line along which he can be 
made competent for his tasks. Our writer boldly 
applies all this to Jesus. He declares that he 
was born a babe, and had to be trained for the 
office of High Priest and Savior. And since his 
work was to be that of lifting men to the height 
of complete obedience to God, even where that 
obedience might involve them in the loss of every- 
thing, including life itself, he had himself to go 
this way. Only so could he learn what obedience 
to the utmost is, or have it called forth and tested 
in his own life, and so be fitted to lead and inspire 
others along that path. 

The lot of other men was often to suffer be- 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 63 

cause they sinned. This was not the case with 
him. Always when he suffered it was because he 
obeyed his Father. It was so in the wilderness. 
Had he yielded, he would no longer have suffered, 
being tempted. Instead he would have suffered, 
having sinned. It was the same in Gethsemane 
and on the cross. Had he turned back and re- 
fused to enter the garden, he would have escaped 
the agony of that sweat of blood out of which he 
emerged triumphant, and experienced instead the 
deadlier tortures of an accusing conscience and 
his Father's frown. And the cross, if he had 
reached it nevertheless, would not have wrung 
from him the same "My God, My God, why hast 
thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34), but one of 
deeper anguish still, and of a lasting awfulness. 
His prayer was always that he might be lifted to 
the full height of his Father's will concerning him. 
His agonies, his cries, his tears are so many proofs 
of what his obedience cost him. And the lessons 
he learned were for him only as they were for 
others besides. He recognized this. In his own 
estimation he was the kernel of wheat that falls 
into the ground and dies rather than "remain 
solitary." (Jno. 12:24.) The purpose of his 
obedience was manward at the same time that it 
was Godward. He knew indeed that it was only 
in dying for his fellows, because in the wrong- 
headedness which arose from their wronghearted- 
ness they would have it so, he could continue his 
life of obedience. "This," he said, "is the com- 



64 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

mand which I received from my Father." (Jno. 
10:18.) So through his sufferings he was made 
complete in and for the service of men, at the same 
time that he was made complete in and for his 
service towards God. 

The final teaching of these writers is that it 
was strictly in view of this acquired and fully de- 
veloped fitness of Jesus that he was raised to his 
present glory and service in connection with the 
salvation of our race. It was because he at 
length reached his fully tested perfection in obe- 
dience on behalf of others that "God himself pro- 
nounced him a High Priest of the order of Mel- 
chiezedek." (Heb. 5:10.) To these words Paul 
adds: 

"He appeared among us as a man, and still 
further humbled himself by submitting to death — 
to death on a cross. And that is why God raised 
him to the very highest place, and gave him the 
Name which stands above all other names." 
(Phil. 2:9.) 

He who was born the son of Mary was fash- 
ioned by the divine will until, made complete for 
the vast work which he became a man to do, he 
was lifted by God to the place of supreme honor 
and opportunity in connection with all the needs 
and possibilities of our race, with the assurance 
that by this means all these possibilities will cer- 
tainly be realized. And since every man must 
grow with the growth of the undertaking which 
he is successfully carrying forward, and particu- 



THE MAKING OF JESUS 65 

larly in cases which are constantly presenting 
fresh and difficult problems, it is not unreason- 
able to think of Jesus as one who is still having 
his capacities developed, while he advances in self- 
realization through the steady exercise of his 
powers, and moves onward toward the day in 
which the finished product of all his toils is to be 
taken over by the Father himself. (I Cor. 
15:24-28.) 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 

Each child begins life by studying objects ex- 
ternal to itself, including its own fingers and toes. 
Then it slowly finds out how it should adjust itself 
towards these things and persons, and by and by 
reaches its first clear I-ought. But so dim is its 
vision of both, the inward and outward realities in 
the case that for years it has to be continually 
recalled from a world of day-dreams into which 
it is forever being led by its imagination, 
prompted by its instincts ; and sometimes physi- 
cal maturity is reached by an individual who is 
still dreaming of himself as something he is not, 
and looking out upon the world about him through 
a mist of unreality, which either pains or delights 
his eyes. 

To be able to take the true measure of one's 
powers through reading one's nature correctly, 
particularly at the moment when the task of one's 
life has to be faced, and to know that the thing 
which seems to challenge one is really his own 
task, is one of the essential things in connection 
with the opening of a great and successful career. 
It is this ability which inspires men with that 
sense of obligation in connection with given tasks 

66 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 67 

which we speak of as a call — a divine call, because 
it is never developed apart from that voice which 
reaches us from the hidden deeps of the Infinite 
Personality. The higher the task the greater the 
need. 

The other thing essential to the greatest ca- 
reers is that abiding sense of the Infinite Person- 
ality, which, penetrating all veils and over-leap- 
ing all barriers, arrives at the place where IT is 
known as HE, His presence as embracing, inter- 
penetrating and upholding all things and all per- 
sons, his plan as one and of infinite scope, the 
purpose associated with it as incapable of being 
finally thwarted and therefore certain to reach all 
its far off goals, and his nature as one in which 
all great attributes inhere complete and perfect 
beyond our highest dreams. When God has be- 
come such to a living soul his service seems to that 
soul almost too high and holy to be attempted at 
all, and we see an Isaiah standing before his vision 
with a "Woe is me" breaking from his lips. But 
as he stays on with his vision a purifying and a 
power cleanse and transform him until he accepts 
his task with his "Here am I, send me," trumpeted 
to the four winds by a consecration which is pre- 
pared to go all lengths. 

In the realm of consciousness Jesus had to be- 
gin at the beginning, like every other babe, and 
like ever}' other human being he passed in its turn 
through each stage from first to last. This at 
least is how his biographers state the case. Our 



68 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

first glimpse of him as a conscious being uncovers 
for us three phases of his inner life. The first of 
these is intellectual, the others moral and spir- 
itual. He was twelve years of age at the time, 
and had accompanied Joseph and Mary to Jeru- 
salem. Their duties done, Joseph and Mary 
joined the company from Galilee and started on 
their homeward journey. Towards the close of 
the first day of travel they missed Jesus, and 
when they discovered that he was certainly not in 
their group at all, they at once returned to the 
city in search of him. There they found him the 
following day sitting among the Rabbis listening 
to them and asking them questions, which, with 
his answers to their return quizzings, awakened 
their wonder. He had even then become conscious 
of the existence and importance of some of life's 
chief problems. He did not know everything. 
He had simply gone far for his years. And soon 
Joseph and Mary were astonished in their turn, 
for when she chided him for what she regarded as 
his unfilial behavior his answer conveyed a rebuke 
along the same lines : 

"What made you search for me? Did not you 
know that I must be in my Father's house?" So 
already his consciousness had been invaded, and 
was permeated, by the fact of his divine Sonship, 
and his whole being was responding in happy obe- 
dience to the highest authority we men can ever 
know. This is at once the least and the most we 
can safely affirm. His consciousness was then, 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 69 

as always, distinct from that of his Father ; and 
that it was a truly human consciousness in the es- 
timation of Luke is most clearly proven by that 
writer's next word : 

"However he went down with them to Nazareth, 
and submitted himself to their control 
And Jesus grew in wisdom as he grew in years, 
and 'gained the blessing of God and man.' " 
(Comp. I Sam. 2:26.) 

To be conscious of duty to God as our Father 
as carrying with it the highest possible obliga- 
tion, and of ordinary filial duty as standing in the 
closest relations with that, is to have reached the 
true level of human beings ; and to grow in wis- 
dom as we grow in years in such a fashion as to 
deserve the commendation of God, on the one 
hand, and of men, on the other, is to pass one's 
youth in the one truly normal way ; and to the 
very extent to which an individual falls below 
that he is a sinner and abnormal. In both his 
inner consciousness and outward conduct the life 
of Jesus was conformed to the highest human 
standards from the first ; and the highest human 
standards are the only true ones. But let us go 
a step further. 

All growth in knowledge implies ignorance, for 
knowledge and ignorance, like light and darkness, 
cannot exist in one and the same place at one and 
the same time. If there is nothing of one to re- 
cede in a given mind there can take place in that 
mind no increase of the other. This statement 



70 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

would be quite superfluous but for the fact that 
so many men have learned to do their thinking 
about Jesus under the influence of the theory that 
he was, always practically omniscient, and so quite 
unconsciously to blink out of sight the fact that 
he began his human career in the stall at Bethle- 
hem with a mind as completely unfurnished as that 
of any babe of to-day. All thinking about the 
person of Jesus which stands associated with the 
virtual denial of this first postulate of Matthew, 
Luke and the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, 
is necessarily false to a degree. 

Jesus never forgot the incompleteness of his 
knowledge, and never shrank from confessing it 
either by implication or direct statement. Apart 
from it his temptations, his fears and his ago- 
nized prayers could never have taken their places 
in his life. His consciousness of ignorance made 
for him, as it has made for each other member of 
our race, some of his sorest trials. But for it 
our New Testaments would never have contained 
the words : 

"Our High Priest is not one unable to sympa- 
thize with our weaknesses, but one who has been in 
every way tempted, exactly as we have been . . . 
Jesus in the days of his earthly life offered 
prayers and supplications, with earnest cries and 
tears, to him who was able to save him from 
death; and he was heard because of his devout 
submission." (Heb. 4:15; 5:7.) Each man's 
consciousness is continually revealing itself in his 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 71 

deeds and words. It is because he perceives or 
judges himself to be this or the other that any 
given man takes the place he does before the 
world. John the Son of Zachariah and Elizabeth 
perceived or judged himself to be the herald of the 
long expected Messiah. Therefore he stepped 
forth from the wilderness seclusion into which he 
had retired for the completion of the deep mus- 
ings, which had been kindling his consecrated de- 
sire and imagination, and began to declare the 
kingdom of God at hand, and to preach the bap- 
tism of repentance, that his people might expe- 
rience such a divine forgiveness as would fit them 
to enter and act their holy part in that kingdom. 
And over against this consciousness of John stood 
that of Jesus by means of which he perceived or 
judged that he was the long looked for Messiah 
himself. For how many days or weeks either of 
them was aware of his true character and destiny 
before taking the inevitable step, we are not in- 
formed, but there was a definite moment when the 
inner eye caught the vision, or the inner tribunal 
rendered the verdict, in each case. Prior to that 
moment character and career alike were for many 
years not even surmised, then for a longer or 
shorter time surmised only, but then and always 
afterwards neither could have taken any other 
course than he did take, without consciously 
withdrawing himself from the direction of God. 
This was as true of John as of Jesus, and 
as true of him who "was in all points 



72 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

made like his Brothers" (Heb. 2 :27) as of John. 

What a true man once sees he can never unsee. 
And no true man can put his hand to the plough 
and afterwards look back. (Luke 9:62.) So 
John and Jesus met at the Jordan and Jesus 
was baptized by John "to satisfy every claim of 
religion." (Matt. 3:15.) In that act the con- 
secration of both reached completeness. John 
had now performed the supreme act connected with 
his mission, and Jesus had definitely and publicly 
devoted himself to his Messianic career, receiv- 
ing a divine as well as a human baptism in con- 
firmation of his personal convictions. (Matt. 
3:16.) 

Still he did not enter at once upon the work 
which lay before him. Why? His ignorance 
stood in the way, and he realized the fact. Two 
wholly different paths lay before him, both 
wrapped in mists which were for the moment quite 
impenetrable even to his clear vision. Like his 
brothers he was compelled to study each new 
situation, and only thus could he know it for what 
it really was. He was true to the Divine Spirit 
which had come upon him and that Spirit led him 
into the seclusion of the wilderness. Arrived there 
he became so absorbed in the study of his problem 
that he forgot food, and so disturbed, let us be 
assured, by the difficulties facing him in the path 
which soon began to reveal itself to him as the 
only one he could tread in the company of his 
Father, that forty days and forty nights passed 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 73 

before he could enter that path with confidence. 
Mark, as well as Matthew and Luke, tell us of 
this experience and Matthew and Luke agree that 
the specific temptation of this period was to make 
an improper use of the power with which he had 
been endued, and that this temptation looked in 
three directions — the supply of his own physical 
need without due reference to the will of God ; 
the adoption of presumptuous sensational and 
spectacular methods for advertising his person 
and mission ; and the attempt to win world-wide 
dominion after the prevalent political type, that 
is to say, through ignoring the universal Father- 
hood of God and resorting to physical force. 

When Jesus emerged from this season of deep 
reflection he knew himself as the Prince of Peace 
and the prophet of the non-combatant. Once for 
all he had decided that none of his servants, ex- 
cepting the slow-learning yet fiery-tempered 
Peter, nor even the sinless angels of his Father, 
could do deeds of physical violence either to pro- 
tect him personally, or to further the interests 
of his work. (Matt. 26: 52-54; John 18:36.) 
Accordingly we are told by Luke that when, 
"moved by the power of the Spirit Jesus returned 
to Galilee . . . and went on the Sabbath 
into the synagogue at Nazareth" he read from 
the book of the Prophet Isaiah — 

"The spirit of the Lord is upon me 
For he has consecrated me to bring Good News to 
the poor. 



74 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 

and restoration of sight to the blind, 
To set the oppressed at liberty, 
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

All his wonders were to be accomplished by 
spiritual means and through the application of 
righteous laws. Matthew was so impressed by 
this fact that when Jesus responded to the Phar- 
isaic plots to put him to death by seeking com- 
plete privacy in a spirit which raised its voice 
and its hand only to comfort and heal every dis- 
eased and distressed one who came within their 
reach, he declared that all this was "in fulfill- 
ment of these words in the prophet Isaiah — 

" 'Behold ! the Servant of my Choice, 
My Beloved, in whom my heart delights ! 
I will breathe my spirit upon him, 
And he shall announce a time of judgment to the 

Gentiles, 
He shall not contend nor cry aloud, 
Neither shall any one hear his voice in the streets; 
A bruised reed he will not break, 
And a smouldering wick he will not quench, 
Till he has brought the judgment to a victorious issue. 
And on his name shall the Gentiles rest their hopes !' ' 

(Matt. 12:14-21) 

Another incident in harmony with this decision 
of Jesus may be cited here. When after he had 
fed a multitude of five thousand, besides women 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 75 

and children, and "his disciples had filled twelve 
baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves 
which were left after all had eaten, and he dis- 
covered that they were intending to come and 
carry him off to make him a king," who could 
feed a prodigious army of fighting men with little 
or nothing in the shape of a commissariat depart- 
ment ! "he retired again up the hill, quite 
alone," horror-stricken and discomfited — (Jno. 
6:12-15). 

Slowly and late it would seem to us from the 
evidence before us, Jesus became aware of a very 
painful relationship which it was his to sustain 
towards his people — the relationship of Judge. 
He saw that he would be compelled to judge them 
as a nation and condemn all but a remnant. 
Jerusalem and its temple would disappear, amid 
unspeakable horrors, and that within the life time 
of some into whose faces he looked as he taught. 
So intense was his patriotism that he could not 
contemplate this prospect without losing his self- 
composure, sometimes even to bitter tears and 
words broken by sobs. (Matt. 23:37; Luke 19: 
41-44; Luke 23: 27-31.) So Jesus was more and 
more consciously burdened as he approached his 
cross. Elsewhere I shall try to show that the cup 
he could scarcely bring himself to drink was this 
bitter cup of becoming the condemning judge for 
his people as a whole. Readers of John 15:22, 
24 will see how the terrible fact invaded the quiet 
of his spirit even while he was making himself 



76 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the comforter of his disciples in the stillness of 
the Upper Chamber. 

His office of Savior to his own! people was never 
absent from his thoughts and he was always con- 
sciously yearning over them. It was his to have 
saved them from their sins first, and through that 
to have saved them from utter political and social 
disruption and disorganization. Hence it was 
that he took up John's message and made it the 
first theme in the preaching of his disciples, who, 
according to John's gospel, soon surpassed John 
the Baptist himself in the numbers they were able 
to bring to repentance and baptize. 

But, as we have already seen, he was less and 
less appreciated as a Savior and more and more 
desired as a king of the ordinary worldly sword- 
bearing and war-waging type. His people dis- 
appointed him and he in turn disappointed them. 
They would not follow him into spiritual union 
with his Father, and he could not give himself 
to them as the ruler they craved. As he became 
increasingly conscious of this impossible situation, 
and found that every wonderful deed that he 
wrought was so misinterpreted that it only served 
to estrange them more and more from the ideal 
which he cherished on their behalf, he began to 
remonstrate and entreat in the manner of Matt. 
11, and to speak of them to his disciples after the 
fashion of Matt. 13:10-17. John tells us how 
from this viewpoint he declared to them — "You 
refuse to come to me to have Life," and asked re- 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 77 

provingly and, at the same time, beseechingly — 
"How can you believe in me when you receive 
honor from one another, and do not desire the 
honor which comes from the only God?" (5 :40, 44.) 
The faith of the Roman centurion and the per- 
sistent believing pressure of the Syro-Phoenician 
woman cheered and enlightened him ; and before 
the end he saw that many will come from East 
and West and take their places beside Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven. 
(Matt. 8:5-13.) So when about the end "some 
Greeks" sent word to him through Philip of 
Bethsaida that they wished an interview with him, 
Jesus, forgetting for the moment his deep and 
abiding sorrow, exulted thus — "The time has 
come for the Son of Man to be exalted. . . ." 
His sorrow reasserted itself again till it wrung 
from him a cry and prayer of distress, but he was 
able to dismiss it once more and further exult — 
"Now this world is on its trial. Now the spirit 
that is ruling this world shall be driven out ; and 
I, when I am lifted up from the earth, shall draw 
all men to myself." In the Upper Room, too, 
he was largely victorious over that depression of 
spirits which was so soon to become overwhelm- 
ing, and could exhort his disciples to believe in 
him as confidently as they believed in God, and 
assure them that he was the Truth and the Life 
and the One Way to the Father — He was the Vine 
and they the branches, while his Father was the 
Vinegrower ! What a significant word in rela- 



78 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

tion to himself as well as in relation to them! 
What a holy calm was his, too, while he breathed 
forth there his high-priestly prayer, saying 
again and again "Father," and just once "Holy 
Father!" But in this also, though sinless he was 
like his sinful brothers — He could not per- 
manently make the far off good, which greeted 
his eyes so comfortingly at times, fill the place 
of the other immediate triumph upon which his 
desires had fixed themselves, and which only the 
bad hands of his own nation had thrust beyond 
his reach. He was not only capable of heart- 
breaking disappointment — he actually suffered it. 
One thing, however, never failed him — the con- 
sciousness of his Father's presence and approval, 
and of his personal union with him. In all his 
perplexities and in every distress of his he was 
sure that his life was bound up in the life of God. 
"I always do what pleases Him," he said. My 
Father is the Vinegrower doing what he will with 
me, his Vine. Looking up at the graveside of 
Lazarus he called out to that Father this confident 
word — "Thou hearest me always." Turning once 
to look his critics full in the face he said, "The 
Father and I are one," and again, "In truth I tell 
you, before Abraham existed I was." It was in 
conformity with this last word that Jesus prayed 
in the Upper Room — "And now do Thou honor 
me, Father, at thy own side with the honor which 
I had at thy side before the world began. . . . 
For thou didst love me before the beginning of 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 79 

the world." (Jno. 17:5, 24.) All three synop- 
tics agree that he testified on oath during his 
trial before the Sanhedrin that he was the Son 
of God. Was this the expression of a self-per- 
ception or of a self-judgment? Did he reach the 
place where at last he knew God and himself 
directly as Father and Son, or was his affirmation 
a logical conclusion from unstated premises, a 
self-judgment? 

However this may have been, his consciousness 
was personal and individual, and it was that of 
a man. In spite of that union with his Father 
which he was able to assert so confidently and 
strikingly, his desires sometimes conflicted with 
his Father's purposes so painfully that his pray- 
ers were strong cryings mingled with tears, and 
his will acquiesced only when he came to see his 
Father's way for him too clearly to resist any 
longer. His wishes, like ours, clouded his vision, 
and sometimes, like ourselves, and notably at the 
end, his wish that things could have been ordered 
otherwise than they were, forced him to question 
his Father's will again and again. The Son of 
God was the Son of Man and he was wondrously 
and gloriously human. 

The only way a true sane man can be known 
is through his consciousness as that consciousness 
reveals itself, with or without purpose, in his words 
and acts. Jesus was such a man. It is interest- 
ing to guess what conclusions the early church 
theologians would have reached, had they studied 



80 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

their Lord from this scientific standpoint, instead 
of mixing their philosophy and hermeneutics for 
the production of dogmas as they did. They 
knew how to anathematize and even slaughter 
each other in their pious rage over homoousion 
and homoiowsion, as these Greek words stood re- 
lated to the person of Jesus, and over the ques- 
tion whether he possessed one or two natures, 
and whether there were in him two wills, one 
human and the other divine. The party which 
could in the end muster the biggest fighting force 
was orthodox, to be sure ! For was not Jesus 
Christ himself a great warrior who rode upon a 
white horse, with his name "King of Kings and 
Lord of Lords" written upon his robe and his 
thigh? And did he not "judge and make war"? 
They merely failed to observe that the one sharp 
sword he wielded "came out of the mouth of him 
who sat upon the horse !" 

Suppose, however, that they had looked into 
the consciousness of Jesus for reliable informa- 
tion on these points, what would they have found? 
If they had humbly consulted the records of his 
life which they possessed, as we possess them now, 
asking, as they did so, what in act and word and 
disposition of his, calculated to throw light on 
these questions, lay embalmed in these writings, 
what conclusions would they have reached? 

Reading Paul's letter to the Romans they would 
have found this word: "According to the inward 
man I delight in the law of God ; but I see a dif- 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 81 

ferent law in my members, warring against the 
law of my mind and bringing me into captivity." 
They might well have been tempted by a word like 
this to the conclusion that in sinful men there are 
two natures and two wills. And this classical 
passage does not stand alone. There is a similar 
one in his letter to the Galatians — 

"For the flesh eagerly opposes the Spirit, and 
the Spirit the flesh ; for these are hostile to each 
other." And in all likelihood the word "Spirit" 
here stands for the marshaled and fighting forces 
of good in each sinful man, while the word "flesh" 
represents the forces of evil resident in each. It 
is, on the other hand, not an unusual thing at 
all for a man to call upon the forces of good 
resident in himself to come to his aid so that he 
may act his part worthily. This fact also seems 
to point to something like a duality of natures in 
men — the higher and the lower, the better and 
the worse. Such is the consciousness of sinful 
men. 

Now what of the consciousness of him concern- 
ing whom the best informed testimony affiirms 
that "he never sinned" — that "he has in every 
way been tempted, exactly as we have been, but 
without sinning?" Did he ever speak of himself 
as the possessor of two natures or two wills? 
Did he in any strait or any distress call upon 
his higher, his divine nature and will, to assume 
full control, and instruct or guide him up out of 
the ignorance or weakness of his human nature? 



82 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

The answer is, easy. There cannot be found any- 
where even one poor hint that he ever did. The 
distinction which he saw so clearly was not that 
between a divine nature and will and a human 
nature and will in himself, but that between him- 
self in his entirety and his Father. To that 
Father and never to his own divinity he continu- 
ally rendered his worship and service. It is to 
him we owe that teaching concerning the Holy 
Spirit upon which the doctrine of the Trinity has 
been erected. When at the time of his baptism 
Jesus came up from the water praying, we are 
told that "the heavens opened, and he saw the 
Spirit of God descending, like a dove, and alight- 
ing upon him." Yet we have no hint that he ever 
prayed to the Holy Spirit any more than that he 
prayed to himself. The Father was his sole ob- 
ject of adoration, and to him alone he fled from 
his human ignorance, weakness and awful dis- 
tresses. Nor did he ever instruct his disciples to 
pray to any other but this same Father in heaven. 
It may be well for me to do no more here than 
simply point out these facts. It cannot, how- 
ever, prove otherwise than helpful for us to main- 
tain the viewpoint from which we can distinguish 
clearly between the doctrines which have arisen 
directly out of the consciousness of Jesus, and 
the ones which have sprung from those of sinful 
men like ourselves. Praying in the name, or as 
the agents, representatives and brothers of Jesus, 
is a thing clearly enjoined by himself, but out of 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 83 

his consciousness there never flowed to any man 
the command to pray either to himself or the 
Holy Spirit. He simply taught his disciples to 
call upon and adore "My Father and your 
Father, and my God and your God." (Jno. 
20:17.) 

From all this it can be easily seen that the 
doctrine of the Trinity can never be truly taught 
till full account has been taken of the fact that 
a human consciousness is bound up with the divine 
consciousness in the working out of God's plan 
of redemption, the vicegerent of the Father in the 
realization of the Kingdom of God being the man 
Christ Jesus — the divine Logos, the Son of God, 
who became this man. He who gives final form to 
this doctrine must do all his thinking in full 
view of the life history of God, which is indis- 
solubly bound up with the life history of the 
Son of God, who is now known to us as the man 
Jesus Christ. This history must be written in 
four periods, the first dealing with conditions as 
they existed prior to the Incarnation, the second 
with conditions as they obtained during the life 
of Jesus in the flesh, the third with conditions 
as they have existed since his ascension to glory, 
and will exist until he surrenders the completed 
kingdom to his God and Father, and the fourth 
with those higher conditions which must prevail 
from that moment onward. 

And what of the human consciousness of Jesus, 
when, the kingdom completed at last, he "surren- 



84 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ders it to his God and Father, and places himself 
under God who placed all things under him, that 
God may be all in all?" Will that human con- 
sciousness then disappear through absorption in 
the divine? That condition would be Nirvana. 
But it must either do that or perish forever. 
Our hearts surely incline us to the latter alterna- 
tive, but is there any man who can speak here 
with final authority? 



VI 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 

Waiving entirely all direct discussion of the 
doctrine of the Trinity, I may introduce this sub- 
ject with a general word touching the offices as- 
signed by the New Testament writers to "the 
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," or, as Paul 
names them together, "the Lord Jesus Christ 
. . . God and . . . the Holy Spirit." 
(Matt. 28:19; 2nd Cor. 13:14.) 

The Father is God universally transcendent and 
universally governing in righteousness and love, 
that is, in the exercise constantly of due con- 
sideration for the interests of all his creatures 
and all his worlds. The Son is God confining 
himself to the limits of a human personality, in- 
cluding for a time its physical frailties, its igno- 
rance, and even its extreme temptableness, and 
working out under all these disabilities a career 
so beneficent and praiseworthy that it must at 
length fill the whole universe with adoring wonder 
and gratitude. And the Holy Spirit is God uni- 
versally immanent, pervading and interpenetrat- 
ing all things and all persons, and carrying for- 
ward everywhere in all its details an infinite divine 
plan for the bringing into existence and the per- 

85 



86 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

fecting of a vast variety of things and beings, 
including our human race itself. The Son is 
brought before us not only as "the man Christ 
Jesus," but also as the archetypal man, "the 
First-born and Head or Lord of all Creation" 
(Col. 1:15; Rev. 3:14); and the Holy Spirit 
may in the name of correct scientific philosophy, 
as well as of sound New Testament exegesis, be 
identified as the one basal, organizing and per- 
fecting Life of all that is, and author of that 
infinite variety in unity which exhibits itself on 
every hand — the Son the Norm and the Holy 
Spirit the Operator in one evolutionary process 
of illimitable scope (Jno. 1: 1-5). 

If the First-born of all creation was the Ar- 
chetypal Man and he stood as the norm for the 
whole process, then clearly the goal of all must 
find itself in a race resplendent with the various 
glories of the Archetypal Man himself. But the 
race found itself allied to the brute and so poorly 
seized of its high destiny, that it required some 
one who could both point out the goal and lead 
in the way to it. Who could possibly do this but 
this same Archetypal Man? And how could he 
do it excepting through a full entrance into the 
life of the race, as he would experience it, if he 
should be born and grow up and act and suffer, 
in the flesh, as a genuine member of it? Such 
seems to be the philosophy underlying the New 
Testament story of the incarnation. But here 
also the Norm calls for the Operator, and the Son 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 87 

can never be separated from the Holy Spirit. 
These writers perceived this clearly. 

All through the story of the life of Jesus the 
Holy Spirit is to be seen as the power upon 
and behind the Son, just as distinctly as the 
"Father in Heaven" is to be seen as the directing 
and controlling authority above Him. In pre- 
senting this fact I shall begin with the accounts 
of the resurrection and, moving backwards, con- 
clude with that of the Virgin Birth. 

In dealing with the resurrection of Jesus a 
word of his own touching it may be first cited, 
and perhaps that given in John 10:18 is the best 
for my purpose — "I have authority to lay down 
my life, and I have authority to receive it again. 
This is the command which I received from my 
Father." He always recognized the fact that 
the authority he wielded was delegated authority. 
He constantly described himself as having been 
sent under the strictest orders, and took pains 
also to make it clear that his instructions did not 
reach him all at once at the beginning of his 
career, but gradually as his circumstances de- 
manded them. When he uttered these words his 
Father's "command" had reached him to move 
straight on in his faithfulness as the Son till 
he had laid down his life and received it again. 
To contemplate the first step was to pass at 
length through his Gethsemane agony, but the 
thought of the second was a portion of "the joy 
that lay before him." (Heb. 12:2.) It was on 



88 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the "authority" of his Father's "command" that 
he looked towards both. But he was not called 
upon either to take his own life or to restore it 
to himself after he had, "by the hands of lawless 
men, been nailed to a cross and put to death." 
The record is that "God released him from the 
pangs of death and raised him to life." (Acts 
2: 23, 24.) And a further word of Peter is — 
"The very Guide of Life you put to death ! But 
God raised him from the dead." (Acts 3: 14, 
15.) In writing to the Romans, Paul made two 
statements on this point which I may note here. 
"Christ was raised from the dead by a manifesta- 
tion of the Father's power" (Chap. 6: 4), is the 
first; and the second (Chap 8: 11) affirms: If 
the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead 
lives within you, he who raised Jesus from the 
dead will give life even to your mortal bodies, 
through his Spirit living within you." In the 
resurrection, therefore, as in all else the Holy 
Spirit is the divine Operator. So even if 1st 
Peter 3:15 should not be translated "quickened 
by the Spirit," the thing is true nevertheless. 
The Father's power to raise from the dead and 
give life to mortal human bodies is manifested, or 
put forth, by the Holy Spirit. 

In calling attention to the next point I may 
first remark that Peter and Paul both wrote at 
least once of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of 
Jesus Christ— 1st Peter 1:11; Phil. 1 :19— just 
as Paul in 1st Thessalonians 4:8 writes of "God 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 89 

(the Father) who gives you his Holy Spirit." 
The point itself is advanced in these words of 
Heb. 9:14 — "Christ, who through his eternal 
Spirit offered himself up to God as a victim with- 
out blemish." While here a man in the flesh 
Jesus made the Holy Spirit his by receiving him 
to the full measure of his capacity, so that 
through his power he might do and endure to 
the utmost the things required by the position 
which he had assumed. And the thing here as- 
serted is that it was through a strength of cour- 
age and devotion which the Holy Spirit wrought 
in him that he was able to pass safely through 
his Gethsemane test and yield himself up un- 
flinchingly, and in the very "beauties of holi- 
ness" as an offering to God his Father, in the 
sufferings and death which followed. 

One of the latest teachings of Jesus himself was 
that the Holy Spirit would lead his disciples, 
after his removal from them, in the ways of all 
necessary spiritual knowledge, and that he would 
do this partly by quickening their memories, and 
partly by invigorating their intellectual powers 
(Jno. 15: 26) ; that they would in this way be 
fitted to offer effective testimony concerning him 
as the Savior of men (Jno. 15:27) ; and that he 
would so open up the Truth to their minds as to 
make clear to them each step they would be re- 
quired to take as they advanced with the task 
which it was theirs to undertake in his name. 
(Jno. 16: 13.) Thus Jesus made it plain that 



90 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

he most definitely relied upon the operations of 
the Holy Spirit for both the progress of his church 
and the conversion of the world. 

He knew how it would be in the case of the 
small company of followers he was to leave behind 
him, because he knew how it had been with himself. 
The servant was to be as his Master. When he 
stood up in his home synagogue at Nazareth he 
read from Isaiah — "The spirit of the Lord is upon 
me, etc." and sat down to open his address with 
the words, "This very day this passage has been 
fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4: 18-21.) 
And all "the beautiful words that fell from his 
lips" at other times were uttered under the same 
mighty inspiration. 

When he passed from his baptism to the long 
season of spiritual struggle in the wilderness, he 
went under the guidance of the spirit. (Matt. 4: 
1 ; Luke 4:1.) Each of the four accounts of his 
baptism by John gives a most careful statement 
concerning the divine baptism which stood most 
intimately associated with it. "Just as He was 
coming up from the water, the heavens opened, and 
he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove 
and alighting upon him, and from the heavens 
there came a voice which said: 'This is my Son, 
the Beloved, in whom I delight!' " (Matt. 3: 16, 
17.) Mark says, not that he saw the heavens 
opened, but that "he saw the heavens rent apart," 
as by a mighty force suddenly applied. Luke 
tells us that it was "when Jesus had been bap- 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 91 

tized and was still praying" that "the heavens 
opened, and the Holy Spirit descended, in a visible 
form, like a dove, upon him." This implies that 
the dove-like form was seen by others besides Jesus 
himself. John furnishes us with the testimony 
of John Baptist on this point — "I have seen the 
Spirit descending out of the heavens, and it re- 
mained upon him. I myself did not know him, 
but he who sent me to baptize with water, he said 
to me : 'He upon whom you see the Spirit descend- 
ing and remaining upon him — he it is who baptizes 
with the Holy Spirit.' " (John 1 :32, 33.) 

According to this word his baptism with the 
Holy Spirit was John's great means of identify- 
ing him as the one person in whose interests 
chiefly he had himself been commissioned. Accord- 
ing to it also Jesus was revealed to John Baptist 
as the receiver of the Spirit for others as well 
as for himself; and this is certainly true to the 
very nature of his mission. 

The purpose and value of this baptism are set 
forth in the words of Peter's address before the 
company gathered at the home of Cornelius in 
Cassarea : "The story, I mean, of Jesus of Naza- 
reth, and how God consecrated him his Christ by 
enduing him with the Holy Spirit and with 
power; and how he went about doing good and 
curing all who were under the power of the Devil, 
because God was with him." (Acts 10: 38.) 

This language sets Jesus before the mind as 
owing his career most definitely to his consecration 



92 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and enduement by God. It was "because God 
was with him" that "he went about doing good 
and curing all who were under the power of the 
Devil." The consecration and enduement were 
essential things. Before receiving them he was 
Jesus of Nazareth, superior in goodness and 
spiritual insight to his neighbors, no doubt, but 
simply taking his share in his home life, the work 
of the carpenter's shop, and the life of the town 
and its synagogue. Along some practical lines 
he may have seemed to his neighbors, and his own 
family even, to be considerably deficient. He 
lacked in what was currently regarded as bargain- 
ing ability we may be sure. He had no cunning 
or craftiness, and did not know how to find 
the blind side of anyone, excepting for the pur- 
pose of becoming eyes to him. He was probably 
looked upon as too good-hearted by half, too un- 
ambitious, over conscientious and altogether un- 
likely ever to go far in any practical direction. 

Before his consecration and enduement he was 
just Jesus of Nazareth, religious, thoughtful, 
generous, but not strikingly strong or command- 
ingly eminent even in the religious life of the little 
town itself. He had not yet found his place and 
his work. He was waiting in the half conscious 
fashion of the great, whose proper tasks have not 
yet reached them. Then the breezes bore him 
tidings of what an awakening of public interest 
was taking place under the preaching of his 
cousin John. "The kingdom of God" was the 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 93 

very word to quicken his pulses. So was the other 
word "Repent," for his own heart had already 
told him that this kingdom must belong to no 
other than a holy nation. What would his part 
be in this great and growing movement? This 
question grew upon him until at last it took him 
to the scene of John's labors and into John's 
presence. He knew his place and his work at last. 
He accepted his mission in his heart. He would 
publicly avow it. But first John must baptize 
him. John felt unworthy. But his scruples 
were overborne and the waters of the Jordan 
touched the Holy One and were themselves made 
holy for the thought of all the succeeding Chris- 
tian generations. Jesus knew the tremendousness 
of this crisis. He went to John praying, came 
from his hands praying, and, praying still, re- 
ceived his divine baptism. Then at once Jesus 
of Nazareth found himself what he has been ever 
since — the anointed and consecrated One, God's 
Christ, and endued with a power which was to 
prove adequate to the various features of the 
whole task which lay before him. And it was 
the reception of the Holy Spirit into a completely 
consecrated nature which made all the difference. 
Thus far everything was clear to the primitive 
Christian mind. Another question remained, 
however. What was there peculiar about Jesus 
of Nazareth that he alone was entrusted with this 
mission and endued with the Holy Spirit in 
this supreme way? And how was it that he be- 



94 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

came possessed of his singular fitness to be made 
the divine instrument in the case? The natural 
general answer was the one which has been given 
in connection with the same sort of question as it 
has been asked in view of the lives of great men 
generally — it must have been a matter of original 
endowment. But how was this endowment 
secured? The question of parentage came in 
here. Could merely human parentage ever se- 
cure so much for any child? The thing was un- 
believable. What then? They must if possible 
obtain all the facts of the case. So we have the 
stories of Matthew and Luke which can be set 
out in four words — Parthenogenesis through di- 
vine interposition. And what shall we do with 
these stories? 

Evolutionary science of the materialistic type 
waves them aside with a superior air, remark- 
ing as it does so that among the higher orders of 
living organisms it knows no such things as vir- 
gin births, and no such things as divine inter- 
positions among the advancing forces of nature. 
These are statements which no one can absolutely 
disprove. But one can accept these and still 
retain the recollection that nothing very solid 
can be built upon human ignorance. One may 
also be free to think, if he cares to, that what we 
call interpositions are perhaps not interpositions 
at all. They are not, that is to say, entrances of 
God into places from which he is usually absent, 
nor results of an activity on the part of God 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 95 

where he was inactive before. The divine im- 
manence must not be forgotten, and wherever God 
exists he exists as both thought and action. Noth- 
ing which ought to come into being does so apart 
from his will, and the more conspicuously neces- 
sary a given life is the more definitely that life 
can be traced to God as its source. Indeed God 
is the source of all life and so of all lives. And 
it is safe to assume, as I have done in one of 
the opening paragraphs of this chapter, that the 
Holy Spirit himself may be identified as the one 
basal, organizing and perfecting life of all that 
is, and author of that infinite variety in unity 
which exhibits itself on every hand ; and that Na- 
ture with the capital N owes all she is to him as 
the very soul of her soul. He made her and he 
sustains her. 

And what does science know about the laws of 
human reproduction? Do a male and female ac- 
tually produce a new being like themselves? Or is 
their union only the condition of that production? 
It is certainly quite as safe to take the latter 
position as the former. What are the facts? 

Several things are true of the inception of 
every human life. First of all the event does 
not take place in obedience to human wishing or 
willing. The most earnest desires and purposes 
are often met by nothing but disappointment. 
On the other hand, where the sexes, even in the 
marriage relation, regard each other only as com- 
panion instruments for sensual gratification, the 



96 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

inception of a new life is often attained as a 
distinct triumph over all the obstacles which have 
with wicked and persistent care been piled in the 
way. In the second place the event occurs with- 
out human supervision, and altogether apart from 
even the consciousness of her who is to play the 
part of mother in the case. The more closely 
one looks into the actual physical facts the more 
apparent this becomes. Two invisible units seem 
to seek each other in a space which to them is 
vast, but they find each other. An almost in- 
finitesimal embrace take place in darkness. Then 
the human embryo which results, fixes itself as a 
parasite upon some point, more or less suitable of 
the living chamber in which it has thus begun its 
career, and, after undergoing a variety of changes 
in form, it is forced to take its place in the air 
and sunshine of this planet, as the most immature 
and helpless of all sentient creatures. 

During all this period it was not nurtured 
through the purposing or planning of any man 
or woman, and the period itself came to an end 
through no wishing or willing of any mortal 
whatever. Birth throes, as well as gestation, rep- 
resent a will which has imposed itself upon the 
whole animal world — a will which is as vast in its 
scope as it is inescapable, and as wise in its hid- 
den operations as it is powerful. It is true, too, 
that, as a rule, the birth-pangs themselves are 
used to awaken, where it did not exist before, a 
love strong enough to supply the care required 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 97 

by the helplessness of the babe. The full breast 
yearns for the pressure of the infant lips and the 
soft touch of the tiny fingers ; so the little form is 
caressed and held close to the heart, and before 
this vision latent father love leaps up strong" to 
defend and to maintain. 

Nothing, then, is clearer than that the conscious 
vital purpose which governs the propagation of 
our race lies elsewhere than in the visible actors 
or agents themselves. It reveals itself at every 
step in the process. The immanent God is here 
as elsewhere a constant and consistent doer, sted- 
fastly carrying out the purposes of his own wis- 
dom and love. 

Coming now to the question before us, namely, 
the conception of Jesus, as it is set forth by Mat- 
thew and Luke, is there any apparent provision 
in our humanity for the occurrence of such an 
event? My answer is this. The personal letter 
of a living scientist, which now lies before me, 
refers to Dr. Edward Wilson's, book on "The Cell 
Development and Inheritance," and, in view of the 
positions of that great authority, makes this 
statement: "It is quite safe to say that Par- 
thenogenesis is by no means uncommon in the 
lower orders and it remains a wonder that 
it is not still more common in all ranges of life," 
when polar bodies and germ cells are so constantly 
found in the presence of each other in virgin 
wombs. No possibility, therefore, could be more 
distinct than this. There is here even the sug- 



98 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

gestion of probability. Can this probability be 
strengthened by any facts or considerations which 
are well within our reach? 

Let us look at the story of evolution itself as 
it reveals the succession of living organisms. 
This story, as Henri Bergsen well argues, is not 
that of a chain which was forged link by link, 
but rather that of several series of ascending 
steps which were separated from each other by 
chasms across each of which an upward leap was 
successfully made, in order that the evolutionary 
progress might be still triumphantly maintained. 
Not to name any other such leap, it is still safe, 
if not too fashionable, to say that our own race, 
low as it may have been at the start, was reached 
in this way. At the same time we are undoubtedly 
related to all the animals below us. To pass up 
from such a sinning world as that in which Jesus 
lived, to his own unsinning life, was certainly 
another leap, and one demanded by the con- 
science of the race itself, but felt to be impossible. 
When we look upon him long enough we see 
clearly that he was a man like every other man, 
excepting in this one thing — he did no sin. But 
this is a tremendous difference. How did it come 
about? The New Testament answer is not nega- 
tived by scientific facts. 

Identify the Holy Spirit with Life ; make Him 
the creator of all things and beings in the order 
in which they have actually appeared and are 
appearing ; take parthenogenesis as an established 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 99 

fact in nature, and confess the possibility of it 
in every race of beings ; and the virgin birth of 
Jesus is seen to be at least as scientifically prob- 
able as that living organisms should have appeared 
in a world of so called non-living matter, al- 
together apart from any direct action of a liv- 
ing being either finite or infinite — an assumption 
which the scientific materialist entertains and 
propounds with a very quick faith. And placing 
the emphasis upon the word "direct " any one 
may perhaps receive this latter doctrine calmly, 
because in that case the axiom touching sufficient 
causes is not necessarily contravened. The 
story of living organisms is the history of the 
upward march of Life — the word, which, I an- 
ticipate, will one day take the place of the word 
Nature, which has proved so elusive and decep- 
tive. 

Life with the whole great task of Creation be- 
fore Him, including the intellectual, the moral 
and the wholly god-like, proceeded with His task 
by slow and steady steps for the most part. But 
here and there He shot upward with a stride or 
leap. When at length he came to living organ- 
isms, he built the virgin birth into the regular 
order of events, and made provision for its occur- 
rence everywhere, that it might be employed at 
any stage whatever, opening the way for it when 
he came to our race just as he had done before. 
In view of all this is it unreasonable to say that 
when he wished a race with well-nigh illimitable 



100 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

intellectual moral and spiritual possibilities he re- 
sorted to this provision of his, and placed in the 
arms of an ape-like mother a child who had no 
ape-like father; and that when the time was ripe 
for placing before this splendid race a man who 
would never display an evil disposition or sin 
against his own conscience, he did this by putting 
into the arms of an Israelitish virgin a son whose 
father was not a sinning man? 

Say that man is related to the whole brute 
creation on the mother's side, and Jesus is a 
brother on the mother's side to all other men ; and 
the whole story is told. 1 You have then given 
creation its place as a part of God's long toil 
towards self-realization, without making him it, 
or it him, in whole or in part, any more than the 
human mother is her own son, or the human son his 
own mother. You have given man his proper place 
at the top of the ascending animal series, and 
have shown clearly that he was endowed with con- 
science and his power of knowing God, with a view 
to having these developed to the fullest possible 
extent, and made absolutely triumphant in their 

iYet not the whole perhaps. "What if the Virgin Birth 
itself should prove the key to unlock the mystery in which 
the origin of species is still so closely shut up ! Evolu- 
tion rightly understood applies only to the development of 
each species after its appearance. Its work is that of 
strengthening characteristics and producing varieties. 
Were the various species themselves brought forth one af- 
ter another by means of parthenogenesis? A case by no 
means weak might be made out for this view. 



JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 101 

struggle with darkness and wrong. You have 
made it plain, also, that Jesus was projected with 
his unsinning life into the midst of the sinning, 
yet nobly striving race of men, as, on the one 
hand, a token to them that their ideal of a human 
life in every way true to its place and time, was 
far from being an empty dream, and as, on the 
other, a guide and an inspiration for every seeker 
after God's sufficient help and saving smile. You 
have shown, too, that the highest office of the 
Holy Spirit here upon the earth is that of unit- 
ing men to Jesus Christ in a life of supreme de- 
votion to God and each other. And, finally, you 
have come to the place where it is seen that Jesus 
in the flesh is the Holy Spirit's norm in both his 
creating and recreating work, while the glorified 
or Archetypal Man, the Son of God himself, is 
his norm in his work where men come to know in 
full, as they have been fully known. 

The first human child brought with it but the 
beginnings of all that was to be realized through 
its advent. Millennium has had to follow millen- 
nium in connection with the full realization of the 
rich and various possibilities whicK it carried with 
it when it came. So Jesus himself was but the 
beginning of the sinless order among men. He 
vividly realized this himself, renounced the idea 
of his completeness in the goodness of God, con- 
fessed his ignorance and his limitations, and held 
before his disciples the prospect of larger things 
to follow his removal from the earth. His com- 



102 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

pleteness was that of disposition and purpose as 
these could be displayed within the limitations of 
his knowledge, on the one hand, and his social 
environment, on the other. 

It was his, moreover, not to replace the sinning 
race by means of a new one, physically, as well 
as morally and spiritually, descended from him- 
self. But by slowly lifting the sinning race itself, 
through intellectual enlightenment, the invigor- 
ation of the conscience and the clarifying of the 
spiritual vision, he was to lead it at last beyond 
every degrading, disabling and painful limitation 
into the fullness of its inheritance in God. That 
is to say, the Holy Spirit as Life brought Jesus 
upon the scene as his final instrument in the reali- 
zation of that completely holy end, which alone 
could make the plan of creation itself worthy 
and glorious. 



VII 

THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 

In dealing with this theme one has first to say 
who Jesus was and is, then ask what it would be 
for such a person to be sinless, and, finally, to 
determine, if he can, whether Jesus was really sin- 
less or not. In giving our answer to the first 
of these questions we may state an affirmation 
which comes to us from every side — He was a man. 
The New Testament writers lead the way here, 
telling us of his birth and infancy, his boyhood, 
his consecration to God, his temptations and dis- 
tresses, his prayers to his divine Father, his human 
agony in Gethsemane and on the cross, and of his 
death and burial. While they most positively af- 
firmed his resurrection from the dead and his as- 
cension to glory, they still spoke of him as 
"Jesus of Nazareth, a man ..." "and how 
God consecrated him his Christ by enduing him 
with the Holy Spirit and with power." (Acts 2: 
23; 10: 38.) When Paul asserted the unity of 
God and the existence of one mediator between 
God and men, he declared that this mediator was 
"the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2: 25.) It is 
in these same New Testament writers, of course, 
that we find the doctrine of both his pre-existence 

103 



104 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and persistence as the Son of God. But con- 
stantly and consistently they represent him as 
having become a man, and seem never to have been 
troubled by any feelings of perplexity in view of 
his complete humanness. They believed he had no 
independent authority, but received continuous 
authorization from his Father. He could not 
even perform his first miracle without a clear in- 
timation that it would be well-timed. They 
taught also that his power to do deeds that were 
beyond the ability of others did not spring from 
within, but came upon him from without ; and 
that he himself anticipated that these deeds would 
be exceeded by those of his followers. They even 
saw in his life the proof that apart from heavenly 
aid, incessantly given in answer to prayers that 
were sometimes associated "with earnest crying 
and with tears," he would have failed both in his 
mission and his personal career. And when his 
earthly task was ended and he was about to pass 
from their sight to the Father, they understood 
him to say that the enlarged authority then given 
him was strictly delegated authority, and would 
continue only until the Father had through his 
instrumentality, along with the mightier instru- 
mentality of the Holy Spirit, secured the complete 
triumph of the principles of love and truth which 
he had been sent to exemplify and enforce. In 
brief, Jesus was, to his apostles, a man while he 
was here in the flesh, and still a man after his 
resurrection and entrance upon his glorified ca- 



THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 105 

reer in the invisible. That is to say, he was God 
become man and continuing as such. 

These apostles were Jews, not Greeks. They 
were, therefore, content to abide without ques- 
tioning in what they regarded as their world of 
ascertained facts. They rejoiced in the essential 
greatness of their Master and Savior. Had they 
philosophized at all, they would have said that 
the pre-existent Son of God did not in becoming 
a man cease to exist. Had he ceased to exist he 
could not have become a man at all. He had not 
ceased to exist, but only to exist as God. Hence, 
though now he was a man, he was divine still — 
the God-maw. 

What they did say, or rather, what they con- 
tinually assumed, was that everything that he had 
done as Creator, Upholder, and Revealer, prior to 
his incarnation, had now to stand associated with 
the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God ; 
since it could be credited to no other either on 
earth or in heaven. An individual's record at- 
taches to himself alone, no matter what the 
changes which may take place in him. So to 
them he was "Jesus Christ yesterday and to- 
day — yes, and forever." He was the one who 
came down, stayed here for a time in our human- 
ity, and then, in our humanity glorified, went up 
to where he was before. In his own person they 
saw him lift this humanity of ours, even while he 
was here in the flesh, to heights only imagined 
before. And all he did he did as a man. 



106 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Accepting, therefore, all that the New Testa- 
ment writers affirm about the pre-existence and 
divinity of Jesus, we must recognize that it is 
as a man that we are to consider him when we ask 
whether he was sinless or not. But we cannot 
intelligently proceed with our inquiry until we 
have first named one of the outstanding facts of 
our humanity. This fact is ignorance. To en- 
ter upon a human career is to begin as a babe, 
with no knowledge at all, and always remain a 
learner. It must not be forgotten that the New 
Testament writers present Jesus to us as both a 
babe and a learner. It is recorded of him that 
he grew in knowledge in his boyhood. He did not 
know at the time of his baptism on what precise 
lines he was to conduct his career, and it was only 
as he moved cautiously forward that all became 
clear. During two years or more of his public 
life he did not think of his ministry as meant for 
any but Jews. When on his one vacation outside 
the territory of his own people, he declared to a 
pleading Canaanitish woman that he had no mis- 
sion to her or her people. There and later he 
learned a new lesson regarding his own work. He 
confessed his ignorance of the time of a future 
event, and told his apostles, even after his res- 
urrection, that the Father had reserved "times 
and hours . . . for his own decision." We 
have no hint either that he had a wider geograph- 
ical or literary knowledge than the men of his 
time. He had no reputation whatever for learn- 



THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 107 

ing. What gave him superiority and authority 
was his amazing spiritual insight. He read the 
heart of God and the hearts of men as no other 
ever did, and so was wiser than all others in the 
essential things of human life. 

His knowledge and originality, even in the field 
of ethics, can easily be overestimated. He did 
not originate either "the first and great com- 
mandment" or "the second." Thou shalt love 
thy God with all thy powers and thy neighbor 
as thyself arrived ages before his coming. He 
found these commandments in the sacred writings 
of his people, and codified and illuminated them 
in his teaching. He was ahead of his times on 
divorce, on oaths, and on the requital of injuries, 
but he never even hinted at the great moral re- 
forms of recent years. The Father had not made 
him acquainted with the "times and hours" in 
which the great principles he affirmed would work 
themselves out in these and all other particulars. 
From the standpoint of the moral reformer, as 
well as from that of the scholar, he was a man of 
his own time. 

Now knowledge has so much to do with the 
correctness of human conduct that no thinker on 
the subject believes it possible for a life to be 
lived which is perfect in the sense of being com- 
plete in every particular, until the time arrives 
when all the relationships of men toward each 
other, with all the duties arising out of them 
shall have become fully known. Ignorance is one 



108 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

of the greatest foes to progress, and progress is 
the one road to perfection. If, then, the perfect 
life is the life which is complete in every particu- 
lar, Jesus did not live the perfect life. His times 
did not make it possible. The best he could do 
was to live as complete a life as was then within 
his reach. And he would find it the same to-day, 
if he were here in the flesh, and living in the most 
Christian country on the planet. If, therefore, 
sinlessness and fullblown perfection are to be con- 
sidered as one and the same thing in connection 
with a human life, it cannot be claimed that Jesus 
was sinless. But this is by no means the last 
word on the subject. 

We have now reached the place where it is 
necessary to state the self-evident fact that the 
claim that Jesus was sinless must be judged by the 
ethical standards of those magnificent men who 
first put it forward. What did the New Testa- 
ment writers mean by sinlessness? After we have 
discovered this, and decided whether Jesus was 
sinless in the sense in which they used the term, 
we can, if we wish, ask whether sinlessness in their 
sense could be regarded as sinlessness here and 
now. 

It can be said at once that the principle which 
guided the New Testament writers in this mat- 
ter is the common-sense one that the attitude of 
an individual toward good and evil is not to be 
found in any outward act whatever, but in the 
disposition and purpose from which his acts pro- 



THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 109 

ceed. They held that to make himself a sinner 
against God in connection with any given action 
the doer of the deed must at least fear beforehand 
that he would in that way either injure his neigh- 
bor or disobey or offend his God, or that he would 
thus disobey and offend his own conscience. They 
held, that is to say, that as far as ignorance ex- 
isted it stood forth as a valid excuse for any act 
or word which was wrong in itself, and that as 
far as knowledge of its wrongness stood as- 
sociated with any such word or act in the mind 
of the doer or speaker of it, that knowledge was 
proof positive of guilt on his part. Luke and 
John present the following as words of Jesus 
himself on this subject: "The servant who knows 
his master's wishes and yet does not prepare and 
act accordingly will receive many lashes ; while 
one who does not know his master's wishes, but 
acts so as to deserve a flogging, will receive but 
few." "If I had not come and spoken to them, 
they would have had no sin to answer for; but 
as it is they have no excuse for their sin. 
If I had not done among them such works as no 
one else ever did, they would have had no sin to 
answer for; but, as it is, they have both seen and 
hated both me and my Father" (see also John 
9:41). Paul's words in his letter to the Romans 
are terse and clear — "Where no law exists, no 
breach of it is possible. . . . Sin cannot be 
charged against a man where no Law exists. . . . 
Love fully satisfies the Law." Over against this 



110 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

last word may be placed this strong one of John, 
"Every one who hates his brother is a murderer." 
Jesus and his apostles after him emphasized 
knowledge, on the one hand, and disposition on 
the other. They taught that to love was for the 
person loving to abstain at once and continually 
from everything known to him to be injurious to 
the object of his affections, and to do instead 
every helpful thing that lay in his power; and 
that a man should love his very enemies. It was 
by this high standard that the apostles of our 
Lord measured him. Let us listen to some of 
them as they announce the result. Peter says, 
"He 'never sinned, nor was anything deceitful 
ever heard from his lips.' He was abused but he 
did not answer with abuse ; he suffered but he did 
not threaten." On the contrary, "He 'himself 
carried our sins' in his own body to the cross, so 
that we might die to our sins, and live for right- 
eousness." Peter knew Jesus better than any 
other man, excepting John, perhaps, and his de- 
liberate written word is that Jesus never sinned 
in either act or speech. He never showed wrong 
disposition, but went to the cross, even, in the 
spirit of a love that carried every sinner on its 
heart in yearning for his salvation. John's testi- 
mony is that "in him sin has no place." He never 
admitted sin into his nature ; so sin never pre- 
pared itself a room or abiding place there. 
"Holy, innocent, spotless, withdrawn from sin- 
ners," is the description given of him by the 



THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 111 

writer of the letter to the Hebrews. And his 
word concerning his own consciousness, according 
to John 8:28, 29, was, "I do nothing of my- 
self. ... I say just what the Father has 
taught me. ... I always do what pleases 
him." No sins of presumption, no running be- 
fore he was sent — obedience to the Father repre- 
sented by every word he uttered and every deed 
he did; is the claim that welled up from the clear 
depths of Christ's own knowledge of himself, ac- 
cording to the writer of the Fourth Gospel. 

Does someone say, "After all, however, he was 
a man of his own time, as we are of ours, and his 
obedience was only as far as he knew. We know 
more of the particulars of human righteousness 
than he did, just as those who come after us will 
know more of them than we do. So admitting 
his claims in full, it must be remembered that he 
could not have lived a complete human life?" 

Such words as these have a foundation in fact 
which we have already recognized, and they de- 
serve careful attention. The first thing that 
^should be said in view of them is this : He con- 
vinced men whose chief business in our world was 
the pursuit of righteousness and real holiness 
that he never once failed where they did — that 
his inner life, as well as his outward, was in per- 
fect harmony with all of moral good and the will 
of God that he did know. And they saw so much 
in his life beyond what they had ever been able 
to build into their own that they regarded him 



112 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

as knowing practically everything. Instead of 
having to make apologies for his ignorance, they 
stood amazed at his knowledge. This is clear. 
It is equally clear that no other man ever im- 
pressed the hearts of his fellows in this manner, 
and to the same extent. No other man was ever 
regarded as sinless by the holiest of his contem- 
poraries, who were at the same time the men who 
knew him best. Here Jesus Christ stands forth 
unique and glorious, clothed with the perfect calm 
which could enwrap only the man whose fine com- 
posure had never been disturbed by any self-ac- 
cusings. It was to the holy he seemed holiest, 
and to them he seemed perfectly holy. 

Now how would a life of this sort be regarded 
if it should present itself in one of our towns or 
cities to-day? It would certainly be misunder- 
stood and persecuted. But how would it im- 
press men after it had run its remarkable course 
and reached its extraordinary termination? If 
a man should arise among ourselves whose every 
word and act, and his very dispositions, were, as 
far as we could see, in perfect harmony with the 
law of love toward both God and men, from the 
beginning to the end of his career — if he should 
seem in our eyes never to have been a transgressor 
in even the slightest particular, but to have given 
himself without a moment's cessation to the most 
unselfish service, alike Godward and manward ; 
would we speak of him as having been sinless or 
not? 



THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 113 

We know what sin is. We have long defined 
it as any transgression of, or want of conformity 
to, the law of God. And when we have been 
asked to define the law of God, we have done it 
in two ways, and said (1) It is that perfect and 
complete ethical code which is to be found in the 
absolute holiness of God himself, and stands 
partly revealed in the Christian scriptures and 
elsewhere; and (2) It is that same code as far 
as it has become a matter of knowledge to any 
individual whose character or conduct may hap- 
pen to be under consideration. When we are 
asked why we have the two definitions, and not 
one only, we answer that we need the first, be- 
cause we must keep ourselves reminded that the 
holiness of God has more of duty and privilege in 
store for us than any man has ever seen as yet ; 
and we need the second as a standard with which 
to measure individual accountability, on the one 
hand, and individual moral worth, on the other; 
since the first cannot be used in this way at all, 
on account of the fact that beyond a certain point 
no man has ever yet known what it is in its va- 
rious particulars. In other words, no man can 
test another by the standard of absolute holiness. 
For no man knows what that standard is, except 
in part. He can judge only by the particulars 
he knows, whether it is himself or another he has 
under scrutiny. So any man who should in dis- 
position and purpose, as well as in word and 
deed, live in complete and positive obedience to 



114 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

all the requirements of the divine holiness, as far 
as they have become known to him, would be sin- 
less from the viewpoint of his own consciousness. 
And if( some man with a larger knowledge of these 
requirements than any or all of his contemporaries 
should attain to this complete and positive obe- 
dience, he would be sinless, not only from the 
viewpoint of his own consciousness, but also, and 
even more distinctly, in the unprejudiced opinion 
of all who knew him. That is to say, if Jesus 
had led a nineteenth-century life with the same 
devotion to God and duty that he showed in the 
first-century life that he actually did live, there 
would be no hesitation on our part in ascribing 
sinlessness to him to-day, particularly if he had 
begun his public career during the second half, 
beginning, let us say, with 1875. 

Sinlessness is one thing; absolute holiness, and 
even complete human righteousness, another. It 
was probably because Jesus, the human learner, 
had discovered this for himself that he turned so 
sharply once upon a flattering inquirer with the 
word, "Why do you call me good? No one is 
good but God." The New Testament claim for 
Jesus is simply that he was sinless. 

Jesus was not jealous of those who were to 
succeed him. He was at once too generous and 
too sure of himself for that. He knew the future 
would be his, and rejoiced all the more because 
those who were to follow him would surpass him 
in their grip 1 upon the whole human situation, and 



THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 115 

in the things they would be able to accomplish. 
He knew that their success would be his, along 
with the whole new order of things which he came 
to establish, and retired to superintend under his 
Father. 

Our conclusion touching the sinlessness of 
Jesus is this : Complete human righteousness fol- 
lows upon complete human knowledge along eth- 
ical lines, and can never be attained apart from 
it. Jesus came fairly to open up the way for 
this attainment by living a life in perfect inner 
agreement with the highest principles that can 
ever govern a human career, and in complete 
harmony with the fullest ethical knowledge of his 
time ; that is to say, he came to do, and actually 
did, all that a man of his time could possibly do 
along the lines of ethical duty. And in doing 
this he accomplished a thing which was never 
done before, and has never been done since. He 
never failed in either disposition or purpose, but 
lived towards both God and his fellows, from first 
to last, a life that was, not only to those holy 
men who knew him best, but also to his own highly 
enlightened and sensitive conscience, free from 
every stain of wrongdoing on the one hand, and 
of neglected duty on the other. It may be con- 
fidently added that in achieving this moral and 
spiritual triumph he reached in principle a height 
beyond which no man can ever go. For it is im- 
possible for anyone to do more than live up to 
his own highest light. And, let me repeat it, the 



116 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

glory of that achievement, so far, belongs to 
Jesus Christ alone. 

Two other questions seem to demand an an- 
swer before this discussion closes. Was sinless- 
ness easier in Jesus's day than men find it now? 
Let each reach his answer as he notes the tre- 
mendous odds which truth and righteousness had 
to face in that old world of decayed and aban- 
doned ideals. Will sinlessness be easier or more 
difficult when all men have at length, through the 
spirit of Jesus, been lifted to the high level of 
complete knowledge of their duties towards God 
and each other? They will then all be helpers 
of each other, and they will remember to his glory 
and praise that he alone kept the sinless way 
when the task was all but impossible even for 
himself, because every man he met was to some 
extent, at least, a hinderer. Knowledge of right- 
eousness can advance to completeness among men 
only as their practice of it pursues the same direct 
tion. On the other hand, each access of genuine 
spiritual consecration must inevitably result in a 
broader vision, until' at length, every earthly duty 
stands forth plain and unmistakable, and each 
member of our race then inhabiting this planet 
has been both disposed and empowered to live 
agreeably with his all-round knowledge of right- 
eousness Godward and manward, 



VIII 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 

No man who has read the New Testament 
stories of Levi's feast in honor of Jesus, the con- 
version of Zacchaeus and that other feast in the 
house of Simon, at which Jesus was more honored 
by a woman of the street than by Simon himself, 
and has added to these the twenty-third chapter 
of Matthew, can doubt the fact that Jesus stood 
in the most radical way for a reform of the social 
system of his time and place. And these are not 
the only instances given us of acts and words of 
his which show the deep interest he took in social 
conditions, and the radical manner in which he 
handled the social problems which confronted him. 

Wherever it was possible he proceeded guard- 
edly and cautiously with the work which he un- 
dertook in this direction. He refused to assume 
the role of a judge in a property dispute and dis- 
missed the man who tried to get a verdict from 
him, with this finalizing question — 

"Man, who made me a judge or an arbiter be- 
tween you?" (Luke 12:14). And when an at- 
tempt was made to draw from him a compromis- 
ing word on the vexed question whether a faith- 
ful Jew should or should not pay taxes to his 
117 



118 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Roman conqueror, his reply was as safe as it was 
skillful and unanswerable. 

"Why are you testing me? Bring me a florin 
to look at. And when they had brought it, he 
asked: 'Whose head and title are these?' 'The 
Emperor's,' they said; and Jesus replied: 'Pay 
to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and 
to God what belongs to God.' " Jesus always 
took the highest ground and spoke as the prophet 
of God. His appeal was to first principles. And 
when he saw that this was not sufficiently real- 
ized he stated the fact tersely and distinctly : — 
"Do not think that I have come to do away with 
the Law or the Prophets ; I have not come to do 
away with them, but to complete them." (Matt. 
5:17.) 

He affirmed the progressive revelation of God 
and duty, and looked towards that 

". . . one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

But he saw that each generation and each man 
had his inevitable steps to take in the one general 
direction, knew the steps which he himself should 
take, and took them. 

The taking of these steps cost him his life. 
Had he temporized and compromised he might 
perhaps have lived on to old age and died in his 
bed. But he could not have either lived or died 
thus as the prophet of God, and much less as his 
Son. The man who has "no stomach for martyr- 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 119 

dom" can never rise to the highest place in the 
kingdom of God, and makes too low a bid for 
even the full and lasting approval of his fellows. 
If Jesus was not an Erasmus in poverty of reso- 
lution, he was an Erasmus in the perils he had 
to meet and the odds he had to face, if he went 
straight on. The same Priest and Lawyer who 
had stood up in deadly hostility to every great 
advance and every great reform of the past were 
still there to be reckoned with. Before the close 
of the first year of his public career Jesus had 
abundant evidence of this fact, and was led in 
view of it to choose a small band, whom he might 
furnish as far as possible with his own ideas, and 
inspire with his own courage and devotion. He 
made that band twelve, that it might represent 
all Israel and give proper headship to each of its 
tribes. (Luke 6 :1-16 ; Matt. 19 :28.) Israel had 
to be reconstituted. If Jesus saw this vaguely 
at first, he soon saw it clearly enough to proceed 
upon these lines, which were at once symbolical 
and practical. 

The general principle upon which Jesus pro- 
ceeded in his programme of reform was that of 
the rights of man. These words may bear an ill 
savor to the nostrils of some, because of their 
association with the excesses of a time in which 
the highest Christian aim, so far as earthly things 
go, found itself associated with the fiercest 
renunciation of Christianity, the bible and God 
himself. The Priest and the Lawyer together 



120 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

had by their perfectly devilish oppressions in the 
name of Christ — oppressions of body, mind, re- 
ligious aspirations and worldly estate — secured 
the flat denial, in the name of all that was holy 
in manhood, of the name of the divine man which 
they had so unworthily and so falsely worn. But 
further they were unable to go. They could not 
kill out of God's world the original inspiration 
of God's Christ, and frenzied mob and frenzied 
legislature and executive alike, proclaimed The 
Rights of Man, and knew them to be holy. 
Christ inspired, though he did not direct, the 
French Revolution. The hate that was in it was 
not his, but the work which it effected has never 
been undone. On the contrary, it is still being 
carried on towards its completion under the eyes 
of all the peoples. And besides, the unavoidable 
misunderstanding, which stood associated with it, 
and for which the Priest and Lawyer were wholly 
responsible, is fast passing away, and the Christ 
is evidently about to come to his own in France as 
never before. Already the Lawyer and a con- 
siderable body of the Priests are under his direc- 
tion to do his will as far and as fast as that will 
becomes known to them. That in many instances 
they do not recognize the fact makes no differ- 
ence. Was not the word of Jehovah to Cyrus — 

"I will gird thee, though thou hast not known 
me?" 

The rights of men were always holy to the 
prophets whether they were the rights of a 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 121 

Naboth, a Uriah, some poor widow, or the rights 
of a whole people. Not only Micah and Isaiah 
but every true messenger of Jehovah besides, was 
prepared to risk his life in their defense. Prop- 
erty rights, home rights, the rights of a husband 
in his wife and the rights of the wife in her hus- 
band, the rights of parents in their children and 
of children in their parents, the rights of the 
ruler over his subjects and of subjects in the pres- 
ence of their ruler, the rights of men generally 
in the presence of each other, and above all the 
right of each Israelite to an unhindered ac- 
quaintance with, and a worship in spirit and in 
truth, of the holy and invisible God of his fathers, 
these rights were continually insisted upon be- 
fore kings and rulers and at all hazards by 
Jehovah's prophets all down the centuries. But 
they were never insisted upon so graciously, yet 
vehemently, so intelligently and so passionately, 
as by Jesus himself. It was he first who spoke 
about the rights of man as man — rights of man 
as man in the presence of his Creator and Moral 
Governor — rights of each man as a man in the 
presence of his fellows. 

Jesus acknowledged no personal or property 
rights of the strong, no rights of the rich as dis- 
tinguished from the poor, no rights of the learned 
as distinguished from the unlearned, no rights 
of the morally upright and respectable as dis- 
tinguished from the fallen and the outcast. The 
doctrine of human rights which Jesus preached 



122 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

was the very antipodes of all this. The weak 
had a right to the care of the strong, the poor 
a right to the help of the rich, the sick a right 
to the aid of the healthy, the ignorant a right to 
the instruction of the learned, and the fallen and 
the wretched a right to the loving, patient re- 
claiming effort of the morally upright and re- 
spectable. So precisely where the favored classes 
had been finding rights of a special kind Jesus 
uncovered duties. Superiority creates the obliga- 
tion to serve rather than the privilege to enjoy, 
was his constant teaching. And he brought him- 
self forward as the supreme evidence of the truth 
of this doctrine. To his own twelve in their 
craving for place and honor he said: 

"Those who are regarded as ruling among the 
Gentiles lord it over them, as you know, and their 
great men oppress them. But among you it is 
not so. No. Whoever wants to become great 
among you must be your servant, and whoever 
wants to take the first place among you must be 
the servant of all ; for even the Son of Man came, 
not to be served, but to serve, and to give his 
life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:42-45.) 
The higher, the stronger and the holier one is, 
the larger his obligation to serve his low and 
weak and sinful fellows, is the constant teaching 
of Jesus. And he goes further yet. He declares 
that the right of the helplessly sinful to the 
salvation he alone could bring them was so great 
because God had created them men, with all a 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 123 

man's right to truth and holiness, that, in 
recognition of all the facts, he had to take his 
place as a man among them, to do, and suffer in 
the doing, all that needed to be done and suffered 
in their behalf. 

In the teaching of Jesus, therefore, individual 
rights are based upon individual needs, and each 
man's claim upon the help of others becomes in- 
sistent at the precise point where his power to 
help himself finds its limit. To Jesus the human 
race was a family of which his own Father was 
the head and the provider. Whether Jesus ever 
distinctly regarded himself as a brother of every 
man may not be clear, but that he came to be 
regarded by his followers as a brother to those 
who received him as their Savior is very evident 
to the careful reader of the letter to the Hebrews. 
And was not this conclusion inevitable from the 
moment he spoke of God to his disciples as "My 
Father and your Father" — just as inevitable as 
it was that they should have reached the doctrine 
of the brotherhood of men in general from the 
"Our Father" which he prepared for all human 
lips? In the family the supply of need is never 
a question of earning power to start with. Hus- 
band and wife do not constitute a family. In 
Jesus teaching the two are but one from the 
family viewpoint. In them as thus united the 
family finds its possibility and, when the union 
is fruitful, its source. Each new family finds its 
right to be called such in the birth of a 



124 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

human babe that has the instant right, though 
not the instant ability, to look up and call 
the man and woman immediately concerned 
father and mother. And before the human 
court, as well as before Heaven, this right 
of a child to say father and mother carries 
with it the right to demand everything 1 which 
its weakness and helplessness may require, 
and for as many years as these may render it 
incapable of self-support and self-development. 
It is also true that in the family sickness, physical 
or moral, makes the same claims as infancy. In 
other words, in this world of God our Father, 
the measure of the individual's need, truly taken, 
is always and in every direction the measure of 
his rights. Commercial principles of the short- 
sighted human variety at least, are set at de- 
fiance under the government of the Father. To 
him loss is gain and death is life. To gain all 
love loses all, and in the end love will own all that 
exists. The goal of our humanity under the 
leadership of Jesus Christ is an innumerable 
family in which health and vigor and plenty con- 
tinue forever, under the care of the infinite 
Father. (Eph. 3:14, 15; Col. 1:20.) 

This is the direction in which Jesus was looking 
when he puzzled men with such sayings as — 

"It is not those who are in health that need 
a doctor but those who are ill. I did not rome 
to call the religious, but the outcast." (Mark 
2:17.) And as he himself implies in this very 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 125 

word, his face was always in this direction. We 
shall never reach the stage of the platitude here, 
not even when through his church Jesus shall at 
length see all the long travail of his soul realized 
in perfected men living in perfected conditions. 
For the perfected will never be the finished. The 
infinite must forever be realizing itself in grow- 
ingly glorious ways. The completion of the 
Christly kingdom marks the beginning of that 
which is dinner still (1st Cor. 15:28). 

Noting now some of the applications which 
Jesus gave to these high principles I may first 
refer to his teaching on the weekly day of rest. 
His word is that it represents a human right 
growing out of a human need, and that its observ- 
ance must be so ordered as not to bring it into 
conflict with any other genuinely human interest. 
He was most insistent at this point ; so much so 
that one is almost tempted to think that once or 
twice he even went out of his way for the sake 
of exposing the absurdity of the Pharisaic no- 
tions which had made the day in some respects 
a burden instead of a blessing. Jesus was a 
Sabbath law reformer. He set out to rationalize 
it. Rationalize is still a word hated by every 
Pharisee. As long as his hide-hound, heartless 
and supercilious race continues to bring forth its 
characteristic progeny this distrust and dislike 
of the unfettered human intellect will continue to 
be cherished. The Pharisee hates that appeal to 
first principles which throws light upon every 



126 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

problem that vexes the human mind and con- 
science. Jesus, as the antipodes of the Pharisee, 
placed his whole reliance upon this appeal. He 
knew that men came into the life of genuine 
obedience through seeing and knowing the truth 
of things, and in this way only. So to the 
Pharisee's word in religious matters do not think, 
but listen to the voice of your spiritual supe- 
riors, Jesus opposed the command to think right 
down to the bed-rock, and build duty upon that 
alone. And the first thing to be sure about re- 
garding the Sabbath, he went on to say, is that 
it was made for man, and not he for it, to be- 
come its bond-slave. He is its master, just as he 
is the master of his horse or his house. He is 
the master of it as man knowing God and not as 
an animal, however. He is its master as one 
who needs both physical rest and spiritual re- 
freshment. And it is forever his to say what 
precise uses he must make of it in his own real 
interests. That responsibility has been laid upon 
him by God. And so I, not as Son of God, but 
as Son of Man and representative of all Israel, 
am charged with the distinct duty of assuring 
you that an irrational Sabbath observance is the 
very opposite of that which God requires at your 
hands. Wake up and think, and when through 
thinking you have come to see what a genuinely 
rational observance of the day is, then take your 
rest, on the one hand, and perform your acts of 
worship, on the other, in the strictest conformity 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 127 

with the views which you will then entertain. 
You are not God's slaves, but free men in the 
enjoyment of a great God-given possession; 
therefore play the part of men by being true 
to yourselves. Of course the Pharisee could never 
understand anything so sensible as this, and the 
Pharisee was strong. Jesus could see that he 
was creating grave perils for himself, but he 
went bravely on. 

There has been much debate over the question 
whether Jesus took any definite ground on the 
subject of war. Here one needs to proceed care- 
fully. But it is safe to make at least two affirma- 
tions. The first is this : He held himself com- 
pletely aloof, as I have shown elsewhere, from 
every position which would have made him even 
seem to assume responsibility for the existence 
or contemplation of armed force. This negative 
condemnation was as pronounced as it could be 
made. He simply would not be made a king, and 
the testimony of Matthew and Luke is that he 
assumed this attitude at the very opening of his 
ministry, because he saw with perfect distinctness 
that the office would have to reach him from the 
hands of that arch-murderer the devil. 

The second thing which may be safely affirmed 
here is that Jesus pronounced most strongly 
against all personal violence. His warning to 
Peter when he struck Malchus could not have been 
made more emphatic, and his testimony before 
Pilate on the subject left nothing to be added. 



128 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

At the same time it is quite true that Jesus at- 
tempted no crusade against either the existence 
or employment of armed forces. The time was 
not ripe for that. So he contented himself with 
stating most distinctly his own attitude towards 
them, and left his witness and his example to do 
the work they are so clearly doing at this mo- 
ment. Personally Jesus was certainly opposed, 
and consciously so, to every sort of physical 
violence. And how could this have been other- 
wise? For Jesus had a perfect passion for jus- 
tice. And war in the name of justice is mon- 
strous. Can justice be reached through the tak- 
ing of unoffending human lives? If rulers did 
their own bloody work when their quarrels grow 
hot enough for the appeal to the sword, the mat- 
ter might look less serious. But even then the 
case would really be the same. The question 
whether this man or that, or this nation or the 
other, is entitled to a given piece of property or 
territory, cannot possibly be determined through 
finding out by a bloody test which has the clever- 
est knack at taking human lives and destroying 
valuable property. The question is one with 
which the intellect and conscience alone are fitted 
to deal, and war or physical violence can never 
be resorted to without perpetrating a fraud 
against both. It was this fact which led to the 
•establishment of courts of justice in every land, 
and to the erection so recently of a court of 
justice of international scope. 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 129 

Tennyson heard the pistol shots in the duel 
between Maud's lovers. Later, too, he heard the 
lover who survived moaning his moan thus: 

"For front to front in an hour we stood, 
And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke 
From the red-ribbed hollow behind the wood, 
And thundered up into Heaven the Christless code, 
That must have life for a blow." 

But, as he himself suggests, the awfulness of 
the echo made by the shot which proved fatal 
was due to the fact that it reached him mixed 
with echoes of the voice of Jesus, which repeated 
his 

"I, however, say to you that you must not re- 
sist wrong; but if any one strikes you on the 
right cheek, turn the other to him also. 
Love your enemies, and pray for those that per- 
secute you, that you may become Sons of your 
Father who is in Heaven; for he causes his sun 
to rise on the bad and good alike, and sends rain 
upon the righteous and upon the unrighteous." 
(Matt. 5:39, 44, 45.) 

Jesus forbade the blow which it is most difficult 
to hinder, that he might thus put a stop to all 
blows besides. Flis veto was directed against the 
very battle which men have thought they must 
wage in self-defense. And he lived as he taught, 
going to the cross at last as a positive advocate 
of non-resistance, on behalf both of himself and 
of all who called him Master. (John 18:36.) 



130 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Looking in another direction we see Jesus doing 
all he could to educate men into such a practice 
of truthfulness as would secure the facts in every 
matter with which they might have to deal, either 
privately or publicly, against all conscious mis- 
representation. It was for the sake of this that 
he attacked the taking of an oath to bind one's 
self to tell a true story anywhere. Why should 
a man bind himself to be truthful in one case, 
unless he were free to confess himself a man of 
unregenerate speech in the general way? Surely 
the person who really needed to be dealt with in 
such a humiliating fashion before a court of law, 
must be so lacking in fairmindedness as to be un- 
reliable even then ! He must be accustomed to 
lying, and how can a man who has trained himself 
long in prevarication, bring himself to even see 
the whole truth of a thing during some brief mo- 
ment, which may make a special demand upon 
him? The one way to a true statement at any 
particular time lies through making true state- 
ments at all times. And the one way to the 
statement which is in all respects true to fact 
must always lie through the unswerving pur- 
pose and effort to be absolutely true in all one's 
views of things, as well as in each of one's 
statements concerning them. Therefore said 
Jesus : 

"Let your words be simply 'Yes' or 'No' ; any- 
thing be}'ond this comes from what is wrong." 
And this word is as invulnerable as it was em- 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 131 

phatic, as important and necessary as it was far 
in advance of the time. 

In the matter of divorce Jesus took ground 
equally high. We may assume that his disciples 
were familiar with the teachings of Hillel and 
Shammai, and knew that the latter opposed the 
loose ideas of the former by insisting that a suffi- 
cient ground for divorce could be found in noth- 
ing short of adultery. Jesus astonished his dis- 
ciples in a way which at least suggests that he 
went so much farther than Shammai himself that 
he pronounced the marriage tie absolutely in- 
dissoluble in the very nature of things. 

"Have you not read . . . that the man 
and his wife become one? So, when once they are 
married, they are no longer two but one. What 
God himself, then, has yoked together man must 
not separate." 

"Why then," they said, "did Moses direct that 
a man should serve his wife with a notice of 
separation and divorce her?" 

"Moses, owing to the hardness of your hearts," 
answered Jesus, "permitted you to divorce 
your wives, but that was not so at the begin- 
ning. . . ." 

"If that," said the disciples, "is the position 
of a man in regard to his wife, it is better not to 
marry." 

"It is not every one," replied Jesus, "who can 
accept this teaching, but only those who have 
been enabled to do so." (Matt. 9 :3-ll.) 



132 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

There are two ways of attempting to account 
for this amazement and dismay of the disciples. 
One may take the ground that they regarded 
Shammai as so severe that they stood with Hillel 
for an easy dissolution of the marriage bond, and 
were astonished that Jesus, who opposed the 
severity of the Sabbath laws of the time, should 
have taken his stand so definitely for strictness 
here. One has strong reasons, however, for doubt- 
ing that the disciples were in this matter fol- 
lowers of Hillel. But if they accepted the teach- 
ings of Shammai there was no ground whatever 
for their dismay unless Jesus actually declared 
that not even adultery was a sufficient ground for 
divorce. On the other hand, too, would Jesus 
have said that only those who have been enabled 
to do so have accepted this, the teaching of God 
from the beginning, if he was at the same time 
merely announcing that he stood firmly with 
Shammai, and went no further. It looks, indeed, 
as if Jesus pronounced against divorce as ab- 
solutely on this occasion as both 1 before and after- 
wards he did against every sort of violence against 
the person, and as if the words "for every cause" 
in the third verse, and the words "except on the 
ground of her unchasity" in the ninth and else- 
where had been supplied or interpolated by some 
hand at some time. 

Very clearly if Jesus taught thus on this 
subject our world has a long way to go be- 
fore it will be found marching side by side with 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 133 

him, for it has not yet overtaken its Shammais. 

In short Jesus stood for perfect justice for 
every human being, and demanded that justice 
both from the court of law and from society at 
large. He saw and taught also that justice could 
never be attained apart from the largest exercise 
of mercy and love. His doctrine was, as I have 
tried to show, that helplessness, physical, moral 
or spiritual, creates the most peremptory rights 
of all. Justice divorced from mercy and love was, 
therefore, regarded by him as no justice at all. 
This is why he dealt so unsparingly with that 
legal dodge by means of which the "Pharisees and 
Teachers of the Law" had managed to turn into 
the coffers of the Temple, which were very largely 
under their control, so much wealth, which should 
have been devoted by the heartless religious de- 
votees concerned to the really pious use of keep- 
ing their own fathers and mothers back from the 
dire straits of poverty in the helplessness of their 
old age. (Matt. 15:3-6.) "Hypocrites" was the 
one suitable word which Jesus found to place as 
a label upon this sort of religionist at this time. 
Later he chose "fools," "blind guides" and "chil- 
dren of hell" as suitable additions. (Matt. 23.) 

To him, for the man or woman who was down, 
justice meant a genuine chance to rise. He saw 
very clearly that ostracism did not provide for 
this in any adequate way. It simply meant in- 
stead — Get to the devil out of this, for that is 
where you belong. In ostracism there was neither 



134 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

love nor mercy. It was a compound of contempt 
and hate. What a genuine chance really meant 
he told in his stories of the lost coin, the lost 
sheep, and the lost son. It meant all that the 
utmost strength and skill of love to the utter- 
most could devise and do for and with the lost 
man and the lost woman — that, and nothing less 
than that. It meant the coming of God himself 
in the person of a man into precisely this rela- 
tionship with outcast men and fallen women and 
every other sort of sinner. And the coming of 
this man into this relationship was a call to every 
happily privileged man and woman to join him 
in his saving tasks. The moment men and women 
knew themselves to be the Sons and daughters of 
the Lord God Almighty they were to understand 
that they had been taken into the family, or born 
into it by spiritual regeneration, to be the as- 
sociates of Jesus in this age-long work. It was 
for this the church on earth was constituted, and 
for this it has been perpetuated. Paul knew this 
when he labored in degraded Corinth. Con- 
sequently after writing to the church which he 
organized there — "Do not be deceived. No one 
who is immoral, or an idolater, or an adulterer, or 
licentious, or a sodomite, or a thief, or covetous, 
or a drunkard, or abusive, or grasping, will have 
any share in God's kingdom ;" he was able to add : 
"Such some of you used to be; but you washed 
yourselves clean ! You became Christ's People ! 
You were pronounced righteous through the name 



JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 135 

of our Lord Jesus Christ, and through the Spirit 
of our God!" (1st Cor. 6:9-11.) 

While here in the flesh Jesus immortalized the 
names of Levi and Zacchaeus. He immortalized 
also "a woman who was an outcast in the town" 
(Luke 7:37). His motto was — God's will, which 
I came to do myself, and to teach others to do, is 
that every fallen man and woman should be given 
that genuine chance to rise which can be secured 
for him only by that perfect justice, which is 
what it is, because it is forever associated with 
infinite mercy and love, as well as with infinite 
wisdom and might ! Or more briefly — All puri- 
fied and loving hearts to the rescue ! 



IX 

JESUS THE REVEALER OF THE FATHER 

The New Testament writers believed Jesus 
Christ to be, in the supremest way, the Son of 
God. Paul, at once the most voluminous and, 
with one exception, the earliest among them, gave 
expression to this faith before hd had gone twenty 
lines in his first extant letter to a Christian 
Church. Congratulating the Thessalonians, he 
told them "how, turning to God from your idols, 
you became servants of the true and living God, 
and are now awaiting the return from heaven of 
his Son, whom he raised from the dead — Jesus." 
(1 Thess. 1:9, 10.) They believed him to be 
God's Son in the same way that any man is the 
son of his father. Accordingly the gospel of 
Luke tells us that before he was conceived by 
Mary, she was distinctly notified of the divine 
purpose that she should become a mother by 
means of the Holy Spirit, that she consented, and 
that a little later, knowing herself to be in a 
mother's condition, she went some distance to 
visit her cousin Elizabeth, and was raised to an 
ecstasy of joy by being greeted on her arrival as 
"the mother of my Lord." (Luke 1:26-56.) 
Matthew's gospel supplements this by telling us 

136 



JESUS THE REVEALER 137 

that when her betrothed husband also became 
aware of her extraordinary situation, he, too, was 
supernaturally informed and brought into the 
same spirit of consecration to God's will which 
she had manifested from the beginning. (Matt. 
1:18-21.) The early church, therefore, looked 
upon Jesus as naturally the revealer of God as 
Father. Since like begets like, they believed that 
he revealed God, first of all, through his char- 
acter, and the fourth gospel represents Jesus as 
saying to his eleven apostles, just before they 
went with him to Gethsemane : "He who has seen 
me has seen the Father." (Jno. 14:9.) 

Whether the church reasoned from the re- 
splendent holiness of the character of Jesus to the 
fact of his divine Sonship, to begin with, as might 
be inferred from one at least of the gospel sto- 
ries (Matt. 16:13-17), or were convinced of that 
Sonship rather by the things recorded in Mat- 
thew and Luke, to which I have just referred, is 
a matter of little practical importance. In what- 
ever way it was brought about, the early church 
was from the beginning absolutely convinced that 
Jesus of Nazareth, the man, was at the same time 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And its members 
were perfectly responsive to the declaration — 
"No one knows who the Son is, except the Father, 
nor who the Father is, except the Son and those 
to whom the Son may choose to reveal him." 
(Luke 10:22.) 

The distinction between revealing God as God, 



138 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and revealing God as Father, should not be for- 
gotten. The former revelation greeted the child 
Jesus in his own home and in the synagogue at 
Nazareth. Every one he met while he was grow- 
ing up, was asserting, as his fathers had done 
before him, and as Mohammedan, equally with 
Jew and Christian, asserts to-day — God is, and 
there is no God besides. Jesus received that reve- 
lation from his fellow-countrymen, when it was 
centuries old. They were also acquainted with 
and taught him, Isaiah's tender word about God 
as the Father of the Israelitish race. (Isa. 63: 
16.) He was their debtor, not they his, so far. 
The things which Jesus brought to the amazed 
attention of his time were God's fatherly care for 
the individual human being down to the very in- 
fant (Matt. 5 & 6; Mark 10:13-16), and his be- 
stowal of his holy likeness upon believers in 
Christ through a real spiritual begetting, which 
made them his sons and daughters, whether they 
were descendants of Israel or not. (Jno. 3:3-8; 
1 Jno. 3:1-10; Matt. 8:11; Rom. 4; Eph. 2:11- 
22.) And this idea of the Divine Father is be- 
coming the very core of Christian, teaching in our 
own day. 

Now in studying Jesus as the great discloser 
of the divine Fatherhood, and keeping in mind the 
fact that he revealed the Father partly through 
his own character and partly by means of his 
teaching concerning him, we may safely ask at 
once what phases of the divine character he 



JESUS THE REVEALER 139 

stressed. What impressions concerning the divine 
Father will the New Testament, and particularly 
the gospels, make upon the mind of the careful 
reader? Will such a reader, looking upon Jesus 
as he is to be seen in these, and listening to him 
as he can be heard through them, come necessarily 
to regard the Father as stern and severe? Or 
will he be impressed rather by his kindness and 
his pitying tenderness? In other words, are the 
four New Testament histories of Jesus and his 
teaching better fitted to convey to the mind the 
tremendous requirements of the infinite holiness 
which they bring into view, than to awaken in 
the heart a humble, yet joyful, confidence in the 
infinitely loving care, and the forgiving help of 
the God, whom Jesus taught his disciples to call 
"our Father?" If there is any lack of perfect 
balance in his life and teaching, on which side is 
the greater weight to be found? God is holy, 
God is loving — which of these infinite facts did 
Jesus take most pains to write upon human 
hearts? Can we be sure, to begin with, that if 
he stressed one more than he did the other, it was 
because that one had become obscured, and needed 
to be drawn forth into clearer light once more? 
Would any one dare say that either is in itself 
of less importance for us than the other? 

When we ask all these questions we show that 
we are not yet on the right track. It can never 
be forgotten that Jesus impressed John in such 
a way that he wrote down for all time, not God 



140 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

is holiness, but "God is love." And is not the 
key-note of the whole New Testament to be found 
in John 3:16? Love is active good-will, and 
holiness is but a phase of that. Holiness simply 
means the absence from a nature of all injurious 
dispositions, desires and purposes, and the pres- 
ence in it of all helpful ones ; and that condition 
is just an aspect or part of love itself. Holiness 
is therefore a part of which love is the whole, and 
the whole is forever greater than any of its parts. 
We reach the truth here only when we get John's 
vision, and learn that to be love is more than to 
be loving. Loving some persons may be as- 
sociated with hating others (Matt. 5:43-48), but 
He who is love can hate no person whatever. He 
can hate only things — the things which mar and 
harm persons, or sin in its various forms. When 
we say God is loving, we can match that state- 
ment in another direction by saying that he is 
holy. But "God is love" is a statement that can 
never be matched until a part can be found which 
is as great as the whole to which it belongs. 

It was the greatness of this revelation of Jesus 
Christ that made him so hard to understand, in 
both his teachings and his life. Some found it 
impossible to take in the fact that he could hate 
no one — not even the oppressors of his country- 
men. His very disciples seem never to have 
divined, in the days of his flesh, the secret of his 
steady refusal to look towards the earthly throne, 
which they thought he would some day be com- 



JESUS THE REVEALER 141 

pelled by circumstances to mount. Such a throne 
would have meant war, and disguise the fact as 
men may, war is based upon hate. Every armed 
conflict means either that men want to kill each 
other, because they have come to hate each other 
enough for that, without any definite reason which 
they can name, blindly and brutally ; or that, be- 
cause one of them stands in the way of the other's 
acquisition or enjoyment of property, or liberty, 
they have come to hate each other enough to 
glory in hewing or shooting the souls out of each 
other. i 

"Hateful and hating one another," and glory- 
ing in the vengeance they could wreak upon each 
other, the men of Christ's day could not believe 
that he meant them individually and collectively 
to entirely dismiss the law of retaliation, and 
adopt the gentle method of loving their enemies, 
doing good to them that hated them and praying 
for those who despitefully used them and per- 
secuted them. And when a Caiaphas did under- 
stand him, it was only, of course, to hate him for 
his peace policy worse, if anything, than he al- 
ready hated the Roman, and advise his murder 
under forms of law. The coming of the Holy 
Spirit from the Father upon Jesus, in the form 
of a dove, at the time of his baptism; his im- 
mediate impulsion by that Spirit into the wilder- 
ness, that he might determine the lines along 
which he would move during his public career; 
and his rejection there of every suggestion that 



142 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

looked in the direction of gathering the people 
about him, as they were, for the founding of a 
world-wide kingdom, that would largely rely upon 
the support of murderous physical force; is the 
New Testament's way of telling us that, when 
Jesus laid himself open to the sneer of being a 
peace-at-any-price man, and so awakened against 
himself the bitterest malice of the warlike rulers 
of his people, he did it under the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit, and that he might show forth the 
mind of the Father in the matter. And the 
further New Testament stories which bring Jesus 
before us as reproving Peter and healing the 
wound he inflicted, when he drew his sword to de- 
fend his master at the time of his betrayal and 
arrest (Luke £2:50, 51); as informing Pilate — 
"My kingdom is not of this world; if my king- 
dom were of this world, then would my servants 
fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews ; 
but now is my kingdom not from hence" (Jno. 
18:36) ; and as even rejecting the thought of hav- 
ing twelve legions of angels put all his blood- 
thirsty persecutors out of action by some sort of 
spiritual jiu-jitsu; show us how, in the opinion of 
his followers, Jesus felt himself led by the spirit 
of his Father to his first decision to eschew every- 
thing that looked in the direction of a compulsion, 
which did not address itself to the unfettered in- 
tellect and conscience. Under his Father he was 
king of the truth and of all who would receive it. 
(Jno. 18:37.) And all who witnessed his in- 



JESUS THE REVEALER 143 

ability to hate even his enemies, looked through 
him upon his father. (Matt. 5:44-48.) 

The difficulty was that his contemporaries would 
not believe it. They had not known God as love, 
or universal Father, and did not want to know 
him as such. They thought their God as deep 
a hater of persons as themselves, gloried in the 
fact that he was almighty, and were simply wait- 
ing for him to make bare his arm for the slaughter, 
which they regarded as already overdue. In the 
meantime they felt there was nothing else for them 
to do but to prepare for this wholesale butchery 
by shedding the blood of the one man who most 
of all stood in the way of it. (Jno. 11:50; 18:- 
14.) 

If we look in the direction of the social and re- 
ligious life of men, we shall still see Jesus giving 
offense, on the one hand, and unspeakable com- 
fort on the other, because he stood for a love 
that knew no caste barriers and no depths of 
sinning that were beyond its embrace. He went 
so far in this matter that he fell under the sus- 
picion of being short in patriotism and penetra- 
tion, if not also in personal purity. Confining 
ourselves to the gospel of Luke, we shall get all 
the light we need on the social characteristics of 
Jesus. The "righteous" people of the time like 
many of the "unco guid" of our own, thought of 
holiness as a moral superiority one of the chief 
duties of which was to guard its own reputation 
or sanctity by ostracising those who did not con- 



144 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

form to its ideals. This notion of holiness had 
worked itself out in a political direction, and 
placed under the social ban every Jew who took 
office as a collector of taxes under the Roman 
government. Taking another direction it had 
ostracised also the fallen woman, and given her a 
sort of preeminence among wrong-doers by label- 
ing her "sinner." It may be noted, however, that 
the seducer and paramour of such a woman does 
not seem to have fallen under the ban of this 
holiness distinctly enough to have shared with her 
either her title or her disabilities. It was that 
sort of holiness which makes up for its inability 
to keep the man pure by punishing the woman for 
her inevitable share in his sin ; and who shall say 
that such a holiness has even now disappeared 
from the earth? To pull the sweetness of virgin 
purity down into their own filth, and then despise 
their sisters and cast them out of their places 
in society and the home, because they are no 
longer pure, has been one of the constant achieve- 
ments of the male members of our race, in which 
they have not lacked the too ready assistance of 
the wronged sex itself. The propriety of such 
acts of ostracism, in view of the eternal principles 
of right, could scarcely remain unchallenged for- 
ever. It was quite certain from the first that 
some one would rise and ask what the Father of 
us all was thinking about it. 

According to Luke, Jesus forced the issue. He 
did it, to begin with, by calling a tax-gatherer 



JESUS THE REVEALER 145 

of Capernaum, named Levi, to be one of his inti- 
mate disciples, and by making himself perfectly at 
home at a feast which Levi immediately prepared 
for him at his home, the other guests at which 
were necessarily tax-gatherers and outcasts. 
When the inevitable criticisms were voiced, he 
made the obvious yet to them startling remark — 
"It is not those who are well that need a doctor, 
but those who are ill. I have not come to call 
the religious, but the outcast, to repent." Later 
a Pharisee named Simon invited him to a meal, 
and while they were still at the table a poor out- 
cast woman crept to his feet and anointed them 
with a costly perfume, weeping over them the while 
the tender tears of her contrition, and wiping these 
away with her abundant hair, because of her 
sense of un worthiness, as they fell. When Simon 
looked his disapproval of Jesus himself, as well as 
of the woman, he was taught that he had been 
ignoring two of the most beautiful things in God's 
world — the forgiveness He waits to confer upon 
the repentant sinner, and the humble tender love 
which wells up from the depths of such a sinner's 
nature when that forgiveness has been consciously 
received. (Luke 7:36-44.) On another occasion 
when "the tax-gatherers and the outcasts were all 
drawing near to Jesus to listen to him, but the 
Pharisees and the teachers of the law found 
fault — 'This man always welcomes outcasts and 
takes meals with them' " ; he replied by telling 
three stories, one about a lost sheep, another 



146 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

about a lost coin and the third about a lost son. 
The first of these he concluded with the state- 
ment: "So I tell you, there will be more rejoic- 
ing in Heaven over one outcast that repents, 
than over ninety-nine religious men, who have no 
need to repent" (Luke 15) ; the second with the 
like word: "So I tell you, there is rejoicing in 
the presence of God's angels over one outcast that 
repents" ; while the third, which we may rename 
The Father and His Two Sons, closes with the 
last joyful word of the father, on the occasion 
of the return home, in sorrowing penitence and 
humble confession, of the son who had turned his 
back upon purity and thrift, and fallen into sore 
want into a far off land — 

"We could but make merry and rejoice, for 
here is your brother who was dead, and is alive; 
who was lost and is found." 

What is the gist of all this teaching of Jesus 
but this? You can never make men and women 
such outcasts but they will still remain your 
brothers and sisters, and still sons and daughters 
to the heart of the Father in Heaven. And no 
one can ever sin himself, or be cast by his fellows, 
beyond the pale of omnipresent and infinite love. 

Luke's additional story along this same line of 
the social life of his time — that of Zacchaeus — ■ 
can well be left untold. We need only remark 
as we pass it by, that throughout this teaching of 
Jesus about his Father, we all but lose sight of 
his holiness, in the awed wonder awakened by his 



JESUS THE REVEALER 147 

amazing love. Not that the former is absent, 
but that it takes its proper place as a constituent 
element of the vast love itself. 

Religiously, as well as socially, Jesus had to 
face perverted notions of holiness. The Jewish 
religionist taught that the divine holiness was an 
exacting thing, which ignored to quite an extent 
the every day needs of men, that it might make 
them holy in every minutest detail of their con- 
duct. As interpreters of this holiness the teach- 
ers of the law multiplied their petty requirements 
till they made that law a tyranny and all life a 
burden and a vexation, so that men could no 
longer think of law and love as the inseparable 
things they really are. The Sabbath require- 
ments of these legalistic teachers were perhaps 
the most irksome of all. No man in crossing a 
wheat field to attend the Sabbath service in his 
synagogue, could break off a head of the ripen- 
ing grain and eat the kernels, for that would be 
doing three or four kinds of labor — reaping, 
threshing, winnowing and grinding. They taught 
also that only danger to life could justify any ef- 
fort on the Sabbath towards the relief or re- 
moval of pain or disease. Under such conditions 
the people, of course, soon learned how many 
evasions could be secretly practised and numbers 
of these evasions came at length to be provided 
for by succeeding generations of lawgivers. But 
the moment Jesus became obnoxious to the Jew- 
ish leaders, they seem to have made up their minds 



148 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

to apply their Sabbath laws in all their remain- 
ing strictness, at least, to the work he was do- 
ing. For his part he saw in their attitude one of 
his great opportunities, with the result that we 
have in the four gospels the stories of eight in- 
teresting occasions when, defying their malice, 
he poured floods of light about their thinkings 
and doings along this line. 

To begin with, he reminded them of things 
that had been done, and of others that were still 
being done with their own consent, against law, 
including the laws which forbade labor on the Sab- 
bath. David had entered the ancient tabernacle 
and taken the sacred shew-bread for himself and 
his military followers. A man, with but one 
sheep, might rescue it from a pit on the Sabbath, 
such was the recognized value of property. On 
that day, too, oxen and asses were led out to 
watering places, that they might not suffer from 
thirst, and any man might pull his boy or his ox 
out of a well and so save him from perishing. 
Clearly, therefore, the Sabbath law knew certain 
reasonable exceptions, and the only question 
remaining to be dealt with was that of the prin- 
ciples upon which these exceptions could be deter- 
mined. One of these, he went on to assert, was 
the principle of mercy and good-will, and the 
Sabbath institution itself represented that, for 

"The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
for the Sabbath; so that the Son of Man (the 
man of mercy and love) is lord even of the Sab- 



JESUS THE REVEALER 149 

bath," and must be free to exercise his judgment 
as to what helpful deeds should be done on that 
day. And he would not be likely to leave a hu- 
man being, throughout a Sabbath, in a condition 
of peril or suffering from which he would rescue 
a brute; because the cry of a man always repre- 
sents a worth that can never be found in any 
beast. 

There was again the fact that religious rites 
were performed on the Sabbath, though they in- 
volved much labor ; and the male child that reached 
his eighth day on a Sabbath, was circumcised with- 
out delay, that the law on that matter might be 
honored to the utmost. If so much was done to 
satisfy law, how much might be done to satisfy 
love — the love of the infinite Father? Along 
these lines, he added — "My Father works to this 
very hour, and" that is why "I work also" along 
these lines. I follow my Father to show you 
what he is like. My Father is not Law but Love, 
and because he is love, the laws he lays down are 
never to fetter, but always to guide into true 
liberty and happiness those whom he has made to 
be his own sons and daughters. 

One might lay beside all this teaching of Jesus, 
as it comes to us from the first century, much 
more besides of what he is reported to have said 
and done as the Son and revealer of the Father. 
But one further word of his own and another of 
Paul's must suffice. His own is this — 

"The Father is greater than I." 



150 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

It was never in the mind of the apostles that 
the Son of God became a man to make himself 
the center of human thought and worship. Their 
conviction was that Jesus no more purposed to 
assume that position, than that a woman — his 
own mother — should be lifted into the place of 
pitying tenderness and helpful, gracious medi- 
atorship belonging to himself. To them he was, 
far beyond and above all others, the revealer of 
God, and came that man might through him en- 
ter into such an understanding of God, the Fa- 
ther of all, as would eventually make all further 
effort of his on their account wholly unneces- 
sary. His work as a man was, in their view, to 
have an end as definite as was its beginning in 
the manger at Bethlehem, or at the Jordan, 
where John baptized him and he began to attract 
disciples. Consequently we have Paul's word in 
his first letter to the Corinthians — "Then will 
come the end — when he surrenders the kingdom 
to his God and Father, having overthrown all 
other rule and all other authority and power 
and when everything has been placed 
under him, the Son will place himself under God 
who placed everything under him, that God may 
be all in all!" (1 Cor. 15:24-28.) 

If the New Testament can be trusted, the the- 
ology Jesus Christ came to establish and perfect 
is theocentric, and has the Father as its chief ob- 
ject of love and worship, with the Son as his 
greatest Revealer; and the purpose of the Son's 



JESUS THE REVEALER 151 

mission was that of bringing all men at length into 
the place where they would so know and enjoy 
God in his Fatherhood, as no longer to need 
either revealer or mediator. That creed of one 
article — "I believe in God through Jesus Christ" 
suggested by Dr. Denny for the uniting of the 
scattered fragments of a dismembered Christen- 
dom, is a good creed, because its God is — 

"The God and Father of Jesus Christ our Lord, 
the all-merciful Father" (2 Cor. 1:3), the "one 
God and Father of all — the God who is over all, 
pervades all, and is in all." (Eph. 4:6.) 



X 

THE KINGDOM AND CHURCH OF JESUS 

A study of the Kingdom of God, or of Heaven, 
of which several New Testament writers make 
Jesus the head, can be best approached perhaps 
through Paul's affirmations touching political 
rulers in general. He declares in the most em- 
phatic manner that these hold office by divine ap- 
pointment. They are God's ministers or serv- 
ants appointed to inflict his punishments upon 
those who do wrong. They are God's officers 
devoting themselves to this special work. Ad- 
dressing the church to which he is writing he asks 
its members a question which he immediately an- 
swers for them. "Do you want to have no rea- 
son to fear the authorities? Then do what is 
good, and you will win their praise. Therefore 
he who sets himself against the authorities (by 
doing evil) is resisting God's appointment, and 
those who resist will bring a judgment upon 
themselves." (Rom. 13:1-7.) 

The point unmistakably involved here is that 
all human government is theocratic, and that the 
laws of every country are in the main the right- 
eous laws of God himself. And this point is 
well taken. Thou shalt not commit adultery, 

152 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 153 

thou shalt not steal, thou shalt do no murder 
were as divine at Rome as at Jerusalem, and, 
upon the whole, as well enforced perhaps ; for was 
not Jerusalem, the bloody city from of old, al- 
ways the murderess of the most righteous, includ- 
ing "the Righteous One" himself? 

Paul saw that the world of our humanity is 
God's in spite of "the Rulers of the Powers of 
the Air — the various Powers of Evil that hold 
sway in the darkness around us." (Eph. 2:2; 
6:12.) It was his faith in God as supreme Ruler 
which made him so optimistic touching prayer 
and the ultimate result of all brave battling for 
the truth in the individual life, in the Church and 
in the world at large. 

Another thing which Paul saw plainly was that 
the world could and would become Christ's 
because it was already God's and Jesus was God's 
anointed and well-beloved Son. No one can be- 
stow what is not in his possession, but all that is 
actually his he can dispose of as he pleases, king- 
doms and thrones being no exceptions. Paul rep- 
resents Jesus as already reigning on the earth 
in his day, and God as continually adding to the 
number of his subjects. Accordingly one of his 
words to the Colossiansi was — 

"God has rescued us from the tyranny of Dark- 
ness, and has removed us into the kingdom of 
his Son." (Col. 1:8.) 

This tyranny of darkness which existed, and 
still exists, under the rule of God is the despotism 



154 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

of ignorance, self-will and ill-will, which the ethnic 
religions and governmental codes could but par- 
tially dissipate and overcome. Further rescue was 
possible only through further enlightenment as to 
right conduct and disposition, on the one hand, 
and through the mighty persuasiveness of an im- 
measurable love, on the other. But God made 
both stand forth in the life of Jesus, and so made 
that life (including the death on the cross) both 
illuminating and transforming for all who should 
be brought within the sphere of its influence. As 
the gospel of the grace of God was preached to 
men they came under law to Christ, and experi- 
enced at once a change so vital that they called 
it now a passing out of death into life, and now a 
new birth or re-creation. Had it been possible at 
any time for men to comprehend the whole law of 
the life of Jesus, and to realize all the power and 
sweetness of the love of God set forth in him, the 
race would speedily have been conformed to his 
likeness in every respect. But we are slow-learn- 
ing beings and still far from the goal, and only the 
smaller portion of our race has been removed into 
the kingdom of God's Son at all as yet. The ty- 
ranny of darkness is visibly weakening, however, 
as the kingdom of the Son widens and strengthens. 
In preparing men for their first introduction to his 
Christ, God moved with a deliberation waymarks 
of which we find in the man of the Neanderthal 
skull and the man of the cranium, femur and two 
molar teeth found by DuBois in Java — a delib- 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 155 

eration which consumed millions of years, it may 
be, and we need not wonder if after nineteen short 
centuries the student of God's work of bringing 
men wholly under law to his Christ, must satisfy 
himself with simply reporting progress. 

A word of Paul to the Philippians should be 
linked on here — "Our commonwealth, or the state 
of which we are citizens, is in heaven." (Phil. 
3:20.) For it beautifully supplements that 
word to the Romans with which this chapter be- 
gan. Heaven is the state of which Rome was 
but a rude province, incomplete and sometimes 
wrong in its laws, because of the darkness in which 
it was still so largely enshrouded, but a province 
under divine rule nevertheless. Its code of laws 
needed revision, correction, and many additions. 
To this end the Son of God had come as Jesus 
of Nazareth, the Messiah, had finished the work 
which it was his to do while here in the flesh as 
the light of the world, had passed again into the 
invisible heaven from which he had come forth, 
and was now introducing growing numbers on 
earth to the consciousness of their direct associa- 
tion with the King of heaven itself as his sub- 
jects. Out of this illuminating consciousness a 
sense of new duties was arising, which would, as 
Paul believed, secure the needed changes in the 
codes of earth. In the meantime these codes of 
earth were themselves heavenly in their origin 
and authority as far as they were in harmony with 
the law of Christ, and every man who knew 



156 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

himself a citizen of heaven was on that very 
ground obligated to a life of the most whole- 
hearted obedience, within these limits, to earthly 
rulers of whatever name. "For," to quote from 
Romans again, "they are God's servants ap- 
pointed for your good. You are bound, there- 
fore, to obey as a matter of conscience. This, 
too, is why you pay taxes." 

There are no mystifications here. Earth is 
literally a province of heaven, or a set of such 
provinces, if it is viewed nationally. God is the 
great King, every righteous law is his wherever 
it is found, and hearty obedience to these laws is 
obedience to him as true and acceptable as any 
that is rendered to him in heaven itself. (Acts 
10:34, 35.) If therefore one is to define the 
kingdom of God as it is represented here upon the 
earth, he must say, at the least, that it includes 
God's government of men in their every day af- 
fairs through the agency of human rulers. And 
if he is asked how the kingdom is to come or be ex- 
tended, his answer will not be that its territory is 
to be increased until it embraces the whole earth, 
for it has done that from the beginning, but that 
its coming or extension must be effected through 
an increase of the knowledge of God and his right- 
eous loving will, on the one hand, and of the dis- 
position and power to do that will, on the other. 
The light must continue to scatter the dark- 
ness until the human conscience is fully in- 
formed, and the dispositions and energies of 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 157 

men are completely rectified and empowered. 
Now the New Testament assigns to Jesus 
all but the supreme place in the accomplishment 
of this end. His position, with its authority and 
power and glory is next to God's, and far above 
that of any other that can be named. He is the 
great intercessor and the "one mediator." So 
exalted did he appear in the eyes of his noblest 
first followers and apostles that at times they 
almost lost the fact of his humanity in the glory 
of his divinity. In comparison with him they 
saw themselves dwarfed and weak and sinful. To 
know him increasingly, and through the trans- 
forming ministry of the Holy Spirit in his steady 
application of that knowledge of heart and life, 
to grow ever more like him, was their most blessed 
hope and their loftiest aim. Still they were not 
unaware either of his humanity itself and of the 
secondary place in the great undertaking for 
which it fitted, and to which, at the same time, it 
confined him. They believed that his work was 
that of expressing divinity in the terms of human- 
ity. Accordingly when Paul presents him as the 
"One Mediator" he presents him also as "the 
man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom 
on behalf of all men." (1 Tim. 2:5.) And the 
writer of the letter to the Hebrews insists that 
his fitness for the office he holds as high-priestly 
mediator arises out of the intensity of his suf- 
ferings and the consequent force and quickness 
of his human sympathies. (Heb. 2:5-18; 4:14- 



158 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

16.) These writers teach also that his conquest 
of the world is not being wrought; out so much by 
him as for him. The placing of everything un- 
der Jesus is the placing of everything under man 
(Heb. 2:8), and this, according to Paul was the 
work of the Father — 

"For he must reign until God has put all his 
enemies under his feet . . . And when every- 
thing has been placed under him, the Son will 
place himself under God who placed everything 
under him." (I Cor. 15 :25, 28) ; uttering as he 
does so his final — 

"See here am I and the children whom God gave 
me (Heb. 2:13). 

"That God may be all in all." (1 Cor. 15 :28.) 

The Hebrew mind found it quite impossible to 
raise the God-man to the height of pure divinity. 
The second person of their Trinity was by his 
very constitution a limited being and in that re- 
spect a lesser being than the first and the third. 
According to John's gospel Jesus himself was no 
exception to this rule, for it reports him as teach- 
ing at the last that his disciples were to await 
the coming of a greater one, the Holy Spirit, who 
was to make his words and his whole earthly ca- 
reer, as these should be proclaimed by them, 
mightily effective for the transformation of men 
both individually and socially. They were to 
find that through his humanity he had simply be- 
come rather the chief instrument than the might- 
iest agent of the Father, and it was as such an 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 159 

instrument that all power had been given to him. 
Whether in heaven or on earth men would find 
in him their highest ideal of devotion to the Fa- 
ther's will, and would through the Holy Spirit's 
use of that ideal be at length fully conformed to 
his image. The Father would thus by degrees 
make his rule world-wide and all pervasive. The 
word of the Father to him was — 

"Sit thou at my right hand until I put thy ene- 
mies as a stool for thy feet." (Heb. 1 :13.) 
So, "After he had offered one sacrifice for 
sins, which should serve for all time, he 
took his seat at the right hand of God, and has 
since then been waiting for his enemies to be put 
as a stool for his feet." (Heb. 10:12, 13.) 

A further thought of Paul is that this King- 
dom of Christ will endure only until it is com- 
pleted, and that then it will be finally merged in 
the universal kingdom of the Father. But this 
has already been so distinctly indicated that it 
needs no elaboration. Still it cannot be safely 
forgotten by those who wish a complete view of 
the subject. The kingdom of Christ exists for 
the sake of bringing men fully to God and when 
this end is reached there will be no further need 
for its continuance. 

It may also be observed here that the New 
Testament writers present other phases of the 
Kingdom besides that of an earthly society con- 
formed to the law and spirit of Christ. They 
viewed it as extending far enough into the invis- 



160 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ible to include the most distant abode of men who 
are no longer here in the flesh. Falling under 
the deadly hail of stones Stephen prayed: — 

"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59) ; 
Paul declared to the Philippians : — 

"My own desire is to depart and be with Christ, 
for this would be far better" (Phil. 1 :23) ; and the 
writer of the Revelation of John heard him pro- 
claiming : 

"I hold the keys of the grave and of the place 
of the dead." (Rev. 1:18.) They believed in 
Jesus as Savior and Judge of the dead as well as 
the living, and that all the race of mankind was 
embraced within the bounds of his rule. 

A study of the gospels will reveal the fact that 
it was his kingdom as distinguished from his 
church, or as some may prefer to say, his king- 
dom as including his church, which was constantly 
in the thought of Jesus. Matthew alone reports 
Jesus as having named his church all. He tells 
us of two occasions on which he did it, and says 
that on the first of these occasions he brought 
the kingdom of heaven into most direct associa- 
tion with it. 

On coming into the neighborhood of Cesarea 
Philippi Jesus asked his disciples this question: 

"Who do people say that the son of man 
is?" 

"Some say John the Baptist," they answered. 
"Others, however, say that he is Elijah, while oth- 
ers again say Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.' " 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 161 

"But you," he said, "who do you say that I am?" 
And Simon answered: "You are the Christ, the 
Son of the living" God." 

"Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah," Jesus 
replied. "For no human being has revealed this 
to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Yes, 
and I say to you your name is Peter, a Rock, and 
on this rock I will build my church, and the Pow- 
ers of the Place of Death shall not prevail over it. 
I will give you the ke} r s of the kingdom of 
heaven." (Matt. 16:13-18.) 

It can scarcely be denied that these words in- 
dicate the distinction between his church and his 
kingdom which existed in the mind of Jesus. And 
we may quite safely assume that this distinction 
is the one which was before the mind of Paul when 
he wrote Romans 13:1-6, from which I have 
drawn some conclusions at the beginning of this 
chapter. He asserted that the state is a di- 
vine institution as truly as the church, and con- 
sequently that its righteous lawsi are to be obeyed 
as the very laws of God. He did not there touch 
upon the fact that through human ignorance and 
sin church and state alike were marked, and 
would long be marked, by both imperfection and 
wrong. But elsewhere he emphasized the limita- 
tions of the church and taught its members to 
look forward to a time in which at length a gen- 
eration would arise that would "reach the com- 
plete manhood — the full standard of the perfec- 
tion of the Christ." (Eph. 4:13.) 



162 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Paul saw that the primitive Christian church 
found the Roman state guiding men along the lines 
of the divine righteousness in their every day ac- 
tivities and that the first business of that church 
was to give the world correct ideas of God and his 
worship and lead men through faith in Jesus 
Christ into lives of active obedience toward God 
and of positive good-will towards each other. 
The church was in this way to produce at one and 
the same time the highest possible order of wor- 
shipers or religionists and the best possible class 
of citizens, and to go on with its task until per- 
fection was attained in both church and state. 
The work had begun and would proceed to the 
end in obedience to Christ, on the one hand, and 
with his character and spirit as its rule and in- 
spiration, on the other. And since all men were 
eventually to be taken up into the movement and 
fully conformed to its life and its law, the result- 
ing religious and political institutions would be 
Christ's — the church of Christ thus producing 
the kingdom of Christ among men, growing 
steadily itself and securing a steady growth for 
the kingdom. This was the inspiring vision of 
these earliest followers of Jesus. We cannot 
doubt that if the apostles found their way 
into India and China, they regarded the politi- 
cal rulers of these lands as God's ministers in the 
same way as they had those of the Roman empire 
in which they had been brought up, and labored to 
produce by means of their preaching of Christ 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 163 

not only the same sort of worshipers, but also 
the same sort of citizens as before, and that with- 
out any reference to the various forms of govern- 
ment then existing in those lands. These were 
minor things and they left them to undergo such 
modifications as the new conditions they were seek- 
ing to produce might require from time to time. 
At the same time, however, they were so far from 
being blind to the need of improvement every- 
where that they looked joyfully forward to the 
passing away of all, whether religious or politi- 
cal, that could be shaken, and to the complete tri- 
umph of that kingdom which cannot be shaken, 
which they had already received as its citizens. 
And they rejoiced all the more because it was in 
obedience to the voice of their God that unstable 
and imperfect things were to disappear. (Heb. 
12:26-28.) 

One need not pause to ask whether Jesus or 
his apostles ever dreamed of some one form of 
government, or some definite set of laws, to which 
nothing could be added, and from which nothing 
could be taken away. It may well be that perfec- 
tion and variety will never be found incompati- 
ble with each other in connection with God's gov- 
ernment of men, any more than it is in connection 
with their personal characteristics under his cre- 
ative hand. Not a perfection of uniformity but 
the perfection of adaptation seems to be one end 
of the ways of God. The Christian's God is not 
the God of monotony. 



164 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

We have now seen how and why the world of 
mankind is becoming the kingdom, as well as the 
church, of Christ, and we may go on to note the 
manner in which Jesus himself is reported to have 
talked on the matter. Our material is abundant. 
We are told that when Jesus urged upon Nico- 
demus the necessity of the new birth, or birth from 
above, the argument he pressed home upon the 
intellect and conscience of that member of the 
Sanhedrin was the deeply spiritual character of 
the kingdom of God, which John the Baptist had 
been preaching for months. It was in view of the 
holy humility which this kingdom demanded that 
Jesus insisted upon the birth by water as well as 
by the Spirit in this case. Nicodemus was in- 
formed that unless he ceased trusting in his Jew- 
ish descent or his high standing among men, and 
publicly confessed his sins and his need of cleans- 
ing from them in the manner then prescribed by 
John, he would never see the kingdom. The bap- 
tism itself was a symbol. But it was also a test 
which the Pharisees and the Students of the Law 
rejected, and so frustrated God's purpose in re- 
gard to them. (Luke 7:30.) Undoubtedly this 
purpose was that these natural leaders of the 
Jewish people should be first in their recognition 
of Jesus as the anointed head of the coming 
kingdom, and foremost in the work of pushing 
that kingdom towards the ends of the earth. Je- 
sus warned Nicodemus that the test was not there 
in vain, and that if he refused to submit to it, he 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 165 

would have to bear the consequences in self-ex- 
clusion from the kingdom. 

It may be as well to assert here that no at- 
tempt to import into the Kingdom of Heaven, as 
the phrase was used by Jesus, the idea of a place 
somewhere in the invisible can ever permanently 
succeed. Its only invisibility arose out of the 
fact that it found its place at the beginning in 
the secret abodes of Christ-like character, pur- 
pose and possibility. The kingdom Jesus had in 
mind was that earthly one which he came to es- 
tablish and carry to its consummation. "The 
field is the world." "The wheat or people of the 
kingdom" are the good among men, while "the 
tares are the wicked." (Matt. 13:38, 39.) 

The parables of the kingdom found in the thir- 
teenth chapter of Matthew show it in three of its 
phases. First we see it seeking its subjects 
among men. Then we see men seeking it as a 
thing of surpassing value. And finally we see it 
choosing or rejecting men in view of their good 
or evil characters. In harmony with all this the 
burden of John the Baptist's preaching was the 
absolute necessity of repentance for all who wished 
the privilege of being its subjects or citizens. 
And when John was thrown into prison Jesus and 
his disciples continued to utter the same word. 
To seek the kingdom of God was also to seek his 
righteousness and its accompaniments, peace and 
joy in the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus put upon the lips of his praying disci- 



166 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

pies no petition on behalf of the church, but he 
most definitely asked them to pray "Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done — on' earth, as in heaven." 
He emphasized the obligations of citizenship and 
insisted that no amount of scrupulous churchman- 
ship could be accepted in the place of fidelity in 
the discharge of these. Tithing mint and fennel 
and carraway seed was not to be neglected, but 
justice, mercy and good faith were weightier mat- 
ters of the Law. Washing the hands before eat- 
ing was of little account, but honoring parents 
was a fundamental duty of citizenship, and to 
make a way of escape from it in the name of re- 
ligion was to imperil the life of the nation by call- 
ing down upon it the wrath of God. (Mark 7 : 
10:13.) 

The realization of the kingdom of God upon 
earth under his Christ required a holy and right- 
eous citizenship. This sort of citizenship should 
have characterized the Jewish people. But in- 
stead they compelled Jesus to denounce them as 
tenants of a vineyard, who had come to regard 
themselves as so securely in possession that they 
could safely refuse to make the returns agreed 
upon, and even beat or kill all, including his own 
Son, whom the king sent to remonstrate. 

" 'And that I tell you', continued Jesus, 'is 
why the Kingdom of God will be taken from you 
and given to a nation that does produce the 
fruit of the Kingdom.'" (Matt. 21:48.) 

This new people had to be produced through 



THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 167 

the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Agree- 
able to this fact is the language of the great com- 
mission. 

"Therefore go and make disciples of all the na- 
tions . . . teaching them to lay to heart 
all the commands that I have given them." 
(Matt. 28:19.) 

In brief the great earthly work of the Church 
of Jesus Christ is that of supplying the Kingdom 
of God with subjects, and of inspiring these with 
the highest possible ideals, until at length the 
whole race has been led up into all Christliness in 
its varied pursuits and activities. The Church of 
Christ exists for the sake of the Kingdom of 
Christ, which is the New Testament Kingdom of 
God and of Heaven. 

In the chapter which follows we shall see what 
Jesus regarded as properly his church, and what 
that church compelled him to do. 



XI 

JESUS THE REDEEMER OF HIS CHURCH 

According to the New Testament, the idea with 
which Jesus began his public career differed from 
the Messianic expectations of his people at one 
point only. They were looking for political de- 
liverance rather than spiritual, and so were filled 
with visions of successful statecraft and martial 
valor; while he set out to achieve spiritual free- 
dom for them, leaving such political results to 
follow as it might please the Father to grant. 

The power of the Holy Spirit which was upon 
him had brought him safely through the strug- 
gle of his initial temptations ; and would not that 
same power do all that was necessary towards the 
correction of false ideas and wrong attitudes in 
the people as a whole? With this work accom- 
plished the nation would be the true church of 
God and his chosen evangelizing agency for the 
enlightenment and salvation of all the world be- 
sides. Had not this glorious movement kindled 
the consecrated imaginations of Micah and Isaiah 
centuries before? And surely what the prophets 
foresaw would prove no phantom. Micah had 
said — 

"But in the latter days it shall come to pass 
168 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 169 

that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
established in the top of the mountains, and it 
shall be exalted above the hills; and peoples shall 
flow unto it. And many nations shall go and 
say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of 
the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; 
and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk 
in his paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the 
law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." 
And Isaiah had pictured the same magnificent 
future of spiritual Israel in words no less glow- 
ing, placing in the foreground one splendid per- 
sonality — "And there shall come forth a shoot out 
of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of its 
roots shall bear fruit: and the spirit of the Lord 
shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and un- 
derstanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the 
spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord; 
and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord; 
and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, 
neither reprove after the hearing of his ears ; 
but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, 
and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth : 
and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his 
mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he 
slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the 
girdle of his loins and faithfulness the girdle of 
his reins. And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: and 
the calf and young lion and the fatling together ; 
and a little child shall lead them. And the cow 



170 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie 
down together: and the lion shall eat straw like 
the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the 
hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put 
his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt 
nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the 
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the 
Lord, as the waters cover the sea." To these 
this prophet had added such sentences as one finds 
in Chapters 42:19; 49:1-7 and 60-62:3, including 
the) one quoted by Jesus in his home synagogue at 
Nazareth — 

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; be- 
cause the Lord hath anointed me to preach good 
tidings to the meek; he hath sent me to bind up 
the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year 
of the Lord." 

With such thoughts of God's great purposes 
inspiring him, and his clear sense of the vast de- 
mands of the situation steadying him, Jesus 
joined John the Baptist in preaching, Repent for 
the kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and its right- 
eousness must be yours to begin with, else you 
cannot even enter it. There can be no doubt that 
to Jesus the kingdom of Heaven meant a 1 reconsti- 
tuted humanity, and that in his view this reconsti- 
tution was to be effected through the exchange 
of love for hate and right for might in every re- 
lationship of individuals and peoples towards each 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 171 

other. This exchange would break down every 
outer and inner wall of partition that harmfully 
separated men from each other, so that they 
would flow together and find themselves one house- 
hold of God. (Eph. 2:14-22.) The prayer put 
upon the lips, and the laws framed to govern, the 
subjects of this kingdom, both alike presuppose 
this. (Matt. 5:43-48; 6:9-15.) The Kingdom, 
when completed, will include the church of God, 
or will itself be included in that church, if any 
one prefers putting the case in that way. 

For a time Jesus's ministry awakened the larg- 
est expectations of the people, and the crowds 
that flocked into the country parts of Judea to be 
baptized by his disciples, exceeded those which 
gathered about John the Baptist himself. In 
this John rejoiced, for he took it as a proof that 
he had made no mistake when he fixed upon Jesus 
as the Unknown One, whose forerunner he had 
undertaken to be. This success lasted until it 
began to be definitely realized that his idea of 
the Kingdom of God was after all substantially 
the antipodes of that which was cherished by 
rulers and people alike. His own Nazareth en- 
dured its disappointment until one Sabbath when 
he declared in its synagogue that Elisha's act of 
healing the Syrian leper, and Elijah's bestowal 
of relief upon a widow of Sidon during a season 
of famine, though Israel had many lepers and 
needy widows in those times, were both in harmony 
with the principle that God would always turn 



172 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

his back upon his people when, through blind dis- 
obedience, they ceased to be his in reality; and 
that he would then bestow his favors elsewhere. 
Then his city rose against him in a fury that 
nearly cost him his life, and he escaped south- 
ward to make his home at Capernaum. 

Here again he prospered until by calling a tax- 
gatherer named Levi from his very place of busi- 
ness, to enter the number of his few intimate dis- 
ciples, and by sitting down with a promiscuous 
company of tax-gatherers and other social out- 
casts, at a feast which Levi immediately prepared 
in his honor, he once more made it abundantly 
clear that, if the thing he represented was the 
kingdom of God at all, it was too unpalatable to 
be received by the leaders of opinion in that re- 
gion. What use could the kingdom of God have 
for men of Levi's ilk? The lot as a whole was 
bad, and no decent society, to say nothing of the 
Kingdom of God, would have anything to do with 
it! 

Soon afterwards we find Jesus looking into the 
heart of the nation at Jerusalem, only to find it 
angry and contemptuously malicious. The Jew- 
ish rulers would tolerate no Kingdom of God 
which ignored their notions of Sabbath-keeping. 
They would permit the watering of an ox or an ass, 
and allow any man to rescue his son or his ox 
from a well, if either should chance to fall into it, 
on the Sabbath; but they would tolerate no cures 
of the sick, where life itself was in no immediate 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 173 

peril, on that day. Neither would they endure 
any man who would represent the kingdom of 
God as non-militant. For was not the Roman 
there to be cast out, and how could his armies be 
got rid of except by force? So the presence of 
this prophet from Nazareth made them as mad 
with rage as it had made the Nazarenes them- 
selves, and nothing but his remaining hold upon 
the pojpular imagination and heart, and the con- 
sequent necessity of proceeding with his taking 
off under forms of law, saved Jesus from immedi- 
ate death. 

Through these experiences it gradually grew 
upon him that his mission was to prove a failure, 
so far forth at least as its success depended upon 
the co-operation of the one church which, through 
age-long divine processes, had been prepared 
with this definite office in view. The revelation 
was most painful. It meant that he must re- 
vise his first programme. But how? The his- 
tory of his people and the words of their proph- 
ets gave him his cue. What could not be accom- 
plished easily and speedily, because the people 
were too dark and evil to be used in the work, 
could be wrought out by a spiritual remnant 
through a long but glorious agony of toil, involv- 
ing both tears and blood. The teaching and 
guiding Servant of Jehovah would also be his 
suffering Servant. 

When Jesus met this situation, he at once dealt 
with it as a thing which ought never to have 



174 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

been. He faced it first with remonstrance and 
later with denunciation, followed by an overwhelm- 
ing grief, that deepened into the dark dismay of 
that sweat of blood, from which he was rescued only 
by that love of his Father, to which he resigned 
himself throughout the struggle. At what pre- 
cise point in his public career this struggle be- 
gan we may not be able clearly to determine. It 
may have been at the time of his rejection at 
Nazareth. But perhaps his language in the syn- 
agogue there did not represent an instant rising 
of his nature to meet a hostility of the existence 
of which he had until then been unaware, but 
rather a thought which, like the hostility itself, 
had been gathering force for some time. It may 
be, however, that he did not see at first that his 
own death by violence was involved in the inevita- 
ble clash of ideals. For he may well have thought 
in the beginning that his vision was too clear and 
commanding to be rejected, when he had once set 
it forth with sufficient plainness. 

The fifth chapter of John shows how he ap- 
pealed to the intellects and consciences of his hos- 
tile critics : 

"I have come in my Father's name, and you do 
not receive me ; if another comes in his own name 
you will receive him. How can you believe in me, 
when you receive honor one from another and do 
not desire the honor which comes from the only 
God?" In the eleventh chapter of Matthew a day 
is described in which "Jesus began to reproach 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 175 

the towns in which most of his miracles had been 
done, because they had not repented: 'Alas for 
you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida . . . 
and }^ou, Capernaum !' " Through the twen- 
ty-third chapter of this same gospel we learn 
that a day came when this "Alas for you !" was 
repeated in Jerusalem itself, in connection with 
such an exposure of the character of the Jewish 
leaders as no man who heard it could ever forget, 
ending with the words : "Alas for you, Teachers 
of the Law and Pharisees, hypocrites that you 
are! You build the tombs of the prophets, and 
decorate the monuments of religious men, and 
say, 'Had we been living in the days of our an- 
cestors, we should have taken no part in their 
murder of the Prophets !' By doing this you are 
furnishing evidence against yourselves that you 
are true children of the men who murdered the 
Prophets. Fill up the measure of your ancestor's 
guilt. You serpents and brood of vipers ! How 
can you escape being sentenced to the Pit? That 
is why I send you prophets, wise men and Teach- 
ers of the Law, some of whom you will crucify and 
kill, and some of whom you will scourge in your 
synagogues, and persecute from town to town ; 
in order that upon your heads may fall every 
drop of innocent 'blood spilt on earth,' from the 
blood of innocent Abel down to that of Zachariah, 
Barachiah's son, whom you murdered between the 
temple and the altar. All this, I tell you, will 
come home to the present generation." 



176 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

His biographers made no mistake at this point. 
They saw that whether he reasoned or expostu- 
lated or denounced, he did it as a patriot who, 
besides loving that impersonal thing which men 
call their country, loved every man, woman and 
child within its territory, and was deeply dis- 
tressed by the awful fate towards which he 
saw they were moving. They did not forget that 
his reproaches against the three Galileean towns 
were immediately succeeded by that yearning, 
"Come to me, all you who toil and are burdened, 
and I will give you rest !" which has been wooing 
men to righteousness ever since ; and that his de- 
nunciations of the Teachers of the Law and Phar- 
isees at Jerusalem had scarcely died upon his lips 
before, with heaving bosom and breaking voice, 
he exclaimed: — 

"Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! she who slays the 
Prophets and stones the messengers sent to her — 
Oh! how often have I wished to gather your chil- 
dren round me, as a hen gathers her brood under 
her wings, and you would not come!" 

In Luke we are told of a time during the closing 
days of his career, when turning from the ac- 
claim of his many disciples, and the correspond- 
ing criticisms of the Pharisees — 

"Seeing the city, he wept over it, and said: 
'Would that you had known, while yet there was 
time — even you — the things that make for peace! 
But now they have been hidden from your sight.' " 
The same writer remembered also that this love 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 177 

voiced itself again, while he was proceeding pain- 
fully towards Calvary — "There was a great crowd 
of people following him, many being women who 
were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 
So Jesus turned and said to them: 'Women of 
Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for 
yourselves and for your children.' " (Luke 23 : 
27-31.) 

The one thing to which love can scarcely bring 
itself is that its object, however unworthy, should 
suffer. And perhaps love suffers more through 
sympathy than its object can suffer through any 
injuries which may be inflicted upon it. This 
fact receives its supreme illustration in the sphere 
of the moral and spiritual. Wrong-doing deadens 
sensitiveness to mental pain, while righteousness 
quickens it. The greater the moral distance be- 
tween two characters, the greater will be the dif- 
ference in their individual power to suffer for 
each other. It is therefore true that "the Right- 
eous One" exceeded all others in this respect. To 
him it was an agony, in the first place, that his 
people were bad and deserved to suffer. And that 
they were bad was doubly an agony, because they, 
above all others, had been meant by his Father to 
attain goodness — a goodness which would have 
fitted them to be the bearers of the message of 
righteousness and peace to all others. He might 
reason about the remnant, and find something like 
rest in the thought of all God could do through 
them. He might reach the place where he could 



178 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

say to his disciples: "Do not be afraid, my lit- 
tle flock, for your Father has been pleased to give 
you the kingdom." But how much better after 
all were these disciples than the great body of the 
people from whom he had; drawn them? Did they 
not persist in retaining the common wrong idea 
of the Kingdom of God and individually covet 
the first places in it? Was not one of them a 
thief and a traitor? And would not all the rest 
of them, in spite of all his teaching, be ill-informed 
and weak enough to reckon everything lost, if he 
should be taken from them with nothing further 
accomplished ? 

So Jesus was torn by questionings, first re- 
garding his disciples themselves, and then by 
corresponding questions touching his people as a 
whole. Those regarding his disciples seem to 
have been set at rest in the Upper Room or even 
before the Passover which he ate with them there. 
They would certainly all be confounded or worse 
than confounded, by his death, but, Judas ex- 
cepted, all would, after his resurrection, rally 
again to their place and work. And if these ques- 
tions were settled, surely all the others, too, were 
disposed of. Not yet fully and finally, however. 

The human mind with its limited knowledge, 
cannot easily reach absolute certainty. One part 
of the cost to us of this imperfect knowledge is 
the painful way our most distressing problems 
have of suddenly opening themselves up afresh 
after they have apparently been settled out- 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 179 

right. Often we reach our chief conclusions only 
to laboriously review them. And this necessity 
for review is practically assured each time one 
wishes his conclusion were unwarranted, for then 
his heart will not let him rest in it. Now Jesus 
certainly wished this in regard to his conclu- 
sion. The great desire of his life, next to that of 
pleasing his Father, had been that Israel, as a 
whole, might accept him as its Messiah, just as 
his few disciples had done. How much it would 
have meant if it had ! His own escape from an 
ignominous death — it would have meant that ! 
But it would also have meant so much more be- 
sides. It would have meant the almost immediate 
salvation of all Israel to spiritual ideals, and so 
the early realization in a large way of the King- 
dom of God itself. It would have meant that Is- 
rael would have filled her true place as the center 
of an evangelism which would speedily have em- 
braced all lands, and brought all peoples into the 
glorious light of God. 

As he passed into Gethsemane under the shad- 
ows cast by the olives under that passover moon, 
he began to groan with a deeper agony than he 
had ever felt before — 

"This is what ought to be ! And surely it 
cannot even now be impossible ! This is the thing 
that ought to be, yet I am to go to the cross in- 
stead ! And my nation is to reach, not the place 
of the glory of the highest service to all the 
world besides, but a future of hideous darkness 



180 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and pain and shame ! Surely, Father, there must 
yet be a way out, which I cannot see! My 
Father, if it is possible, let me be spared this cup." 
Thus he cried and cried, till the bloody sweat oozed 
and fell to the earth on which he lay, and he 
reached for the last time the awful conclusion 
that nothing in harmony with the moral govern- 
ment of the world could avert this crowning trag- 
edy. Then he prayed again, passing as he did 
so into an almost completely satisfying vision of 
the whole situation — 

"My Father, if I cannot be spared this cup, but 
must drink it, thy will be done !" 

So our Christ cried his cry and lost the boon 
he craved, to win instead the place where he could 
through all the pain and shame, be the Savior to 
men who were so disappointingly bad, convincing 
them of their blindness and sin by means of his 
death, though he could not do it by means of the 
richest human life that was ever lived in God. 

It has often happened that the thing which 
ought to have been has proved only the thing 
which might have been, and the thing which ought 
never to have been the thing which no available 
power could avert. Such results stand asso- 
ciated with the freedom of the human will and the 
conscious confessed badness and ignorance of 
men. When Jesus was finally rejected at Jeru- 
salem the greatest event our sinful world could 
have known at that period was made impossible 
for all time; for then the anointed of God was 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 181 

sent to the cross by the very people whom he came 
to build into a church so great and glorious that 
it would successfully preach the Salvation of 
God from Palestine to the uttermost parts of 
the earth. Then, too, was committed a sin and 
crime as far beyond that involved in the slaugh- 
ter of preceding prophets and righteous men as 
Jesus Christ was superior to these. In it, as he 
himself is reported to have warned them would 
be the case, was wrapped up, as it were, the guilt 
of "every drop of innocent 'blood spilt on earth,' 
from the blood of innocent Abel down to that of 
Zachariah." And this guilt rested upon the 
church that Christ came to inspire and lead in 
the spiritual conquest of the earth. 

Recognition of this fact prepares us for sev- 
eral words of the New Testament which indicate 
that, in Christ's view, it was the church rather 
than the world, for which he paid his life as a 
ransom or redemption price. In the very nature 
of the case the church was his first concern. He 
had a vast work to do, and for its speedy accom- 
plishment he needed a great host of workers, 
specially fitted for the discharge of the duties of 
the various offices which that work involved. 
That host would be his church; so he thought 
at the start. And when later he saw his host 
dwindle to a handful, his concern was correspond- 
ingly deepened. For his handful was much like 
the rest, and it also needed redeeming from its 
false ideals and its deplorable unspirituality. 



182 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Then, too, as conversions would take place through 
its instrumentality, the new believers would be- 
come an additional part of the church or work- 
ing force itself. Only so could the world as a 
whole be lifted into the light of God. This, I 
say, is why his followers wrote and spoke as they 
did about his redemption of his Church — his buy- 
ing it for God out of the general body of 
humanity. 

These writers tell us that "God so loved the 
world that he gave his only Son," and that Jesus 
was, because of his sufferings and death, crowned 
with glory and honor ; so that his tasting the 
bitterness of death should, in God's loving-kind- 
ness, be on behalf of all mankind. But they 
never tell us that Jesus Christ loved the world. 
On the other hand they dwell rapturously upon 
his love for the church. 

A few of these words ought to be quoted here. 
When John set out to record the story of the 
way the Master washed his disciples' feet at the 
time of the last passover supper' he ate with them, 
he began by stating that 1 "he loved those who were 
his own in the world, and he loved them to the 
last." To the Ephesians and to his true child 
Titus Paul wrote : "Christ loved the Church, and 
gave himself for her, to make her holy. 
So that he might himself bring the Church, in 
all her beauty, into his presence, with no spot 
or wrinkle or blemish of any kind, but that she 
might be holy and faultless." "He gave himself 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 183 

on our behalf, to deliver us from all wickedness, 
and purify for himself a People who should be 
peculiarly his own and eager to do good." 

The Church was on his heart when, in the 
upper room, he was face to face with the cross, 
and poured out his soul to the Father — "I pray 
for them. I pray not for the world, but for 
those whom thou hast given me. . . . Neither 
for these only do I pray, but for them also that 
believe on me through their word; that they may 
all be one . . . that the world may believe 
that thou didst send me." His feeling was that, 
first of all, he was the redeemer of his church, 
and afterwards through it the Savior of the world, 
or, as Paul puts it, "the Savior of all men and 
especially of those who hold the Faith." Look- 
ing in precisely the same direction are the words 
of John concerning the blood-thirsty advice re- 
garding Jesus which the high-priest Caiaphas 
gave the Sanhedrin — that unconsciously "he 
prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation," 
which should as a whole have been his church, — 
"and not for the nation only, but also that he 
might unite in one body the children of God now 
scattered far and wide." 

The heart of Jesus was broken by disappoint- 
ment. This disappointment voiced itself for the 
last time when, just before he expired on the 
cross, he cried out in anguish — "My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken me?" And the thing 
which disappointed him was the sin of his church. 



184 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

He ought never to have been called upon to 
redeem it. But its ignorance and badness, grow- 
ing out of its lack of spirituality, forced the 
task upon him. ,He ought, instead, to have been 
the church's accepted head from the first. No 
teaching of the New Testament is clearer than 
this for one who has come to view that life in 
its true perspective. He came to his own, and his 
own ought to have received him. It was theirs 
to have been in their deepest hearts a theocracy, 
with their spiritual overtopping their political 
ambitions. But they were no such thing. On 
the contrary, their religion consisted in a sincere, 
but vain, attempt to bend the Almighty to their 
will, and get the All-wise One to take a reason- 
able view of things ! They nursed the delusion 
that, since they had Abraham as their ancestor, 
God was under large obligations to them, if not 
actually dependent upon them. 

They were bound to get the worst of it in the 
end, of course. Counting themselves the first of 
patriots their rejection of Jesus as no patriot 
at all cost them everything a patriot holds dear. 
Because the moral government of God is no poor 
pretense, that can safely be mocked, the penalty 
it exacted was the absolute overthrow of their 
religion, as far as it was represented by sacrifi- 
cial rites and ceremonies, the permanent breaking 
up of their political institutions, and their age- 
long expatriation from a soil so dear to them, 
that their descendants two thousand years after 



JESUS THE REDEEMER 185 

the event, still prostrate themselves to kiss it, 
when their wanderings permit them the opportu- 
nity. 

When "the Word became Man" and "His own" 
stood face to face with him, they found themselves 
compelled to choose one of two courses. They 
had either to accept his leadership or "become 
his betrayers and murderers." God who has from 
the first triumphed over human wickedness by 
building 1 its deeds into his plans (Acts 3:13-19; 
2:23), foresaw that this church would pursue the 
latter course, involving itself in the most awful 
thraldom possible, and decreed that in spite of 
its ill deserts it should be redeemed (Rom. 11:25, 
26) ; so that, when it could not, because it would 
not, be reconciled to God by the life of his Son, 
God put his love for it beyond all doubt, by send- 
ing his Son to the cross, to reconcile to himself, 
through that death, each member of it, and all 
men besides. (Rom. 5:8-10.) Thus by means 
of a sacrifice, which ought never to have been 
necessary, our race is being brought to God. 
And the whole body of believers continually re- 
cites — 

"Christ loved the Church and gave himself for 
her" (Eph. 5:25); while individually they ador- 
ingly add — 

He is "the Son of God, who loved me, and gave 
himself for me." (Gal. 2:20.) 



XII 

JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 

The death of Jesus Christ is the most awful 
and at the same time the most glorious event in 
the spiritual history of our race. He was mur- 
dered by his own people, when he was sent to 
bless them by turning each one of them from his 
wicked ways. (Acts 3:26.) But it is also true 
that he was handed over to death both 1 by his God 
and Father and by himself. His death was in- 
cluded in the vast redeeming plan of God from the 
beginning. It was by his stripes that men were 
to be healed. After his incarnation this fact be- 
came at last a part of his human knowledge, and, 
agreeably to it, he laid down his life, falling as a 
grain of wheat falls into the earth, to produce a 
harvest. "Once for all he died for our sins, the 
innocent One for the guilty many, that he might 
bring us to God." (1st Pet. 3:18.) By his 
bringing us to God he reconciles us to him or 
at-ones us with him. And since his death is the 
means by which he effects this work of reconcilia- 
tion and at-one-ment, it has been called his at-one- 
ing or atoning death. Then another step in 
thought and its expression has brought it to pass 
that the death itself is spoken of as the atonement. 

186 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 187 

This word atonement is often upon the lips of 
Christian believers, and has been for generations. 
Still it was not a word of the apostolic church. 
It occurs but once in the new Testament, namely, 
in Romans 5:11. And no modern translator of 
the Greek New Testament uses the word even here 
but represents the Greek Katallage and Katalasso 
by the words reconciliation and reconcile. The 
reason for this is that the word atonement is more 
or less misleading, while reconcile and reconcilia- 
tion are not so open to that objection. The word 
is favored to-day by theologians who entertain 
certain views touching the purpose of Christ's 
death. They use it to represent the work which 
they say he accomplished by his death upon the 
cross, and which they call his finished work — his 
all-sufficient atonement. 

The work which had to be effected, according 
to this teaching, was the bringing of God into 
the place where his wrath against the race of sin- 
ners he had created, or the offense his holiness 
had taken in view of their sin, would be so far ap- 
peased or mollified that he could forgive its in- 
dividual members — forgive them in a body once 
and for all, if we may trust Principal Forsyth in 
his "Cruciality of The Cross." On page 89 of 
this book he declares — 

"The conscience finds no rest till it finds in the cross 
the one final act in which both the goodness and the 
severity of God are reconciled and inwoven, with the 
grace uppermost. I meet the atonement where the 



188 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

sin of the world is taken away, which carries in it the 
roregone forgiveness of sins that I dread and yet am 
sure that I shall do." 

On pages 90, 91 he adds — 

"A man with his eyes truly opened to his sin must 
have a finished work, and a God who has made a 
full end. A conscience in his state, as soon as it 
thinks on a world scale, must have a grace and sal- 
vation which is not benignant only, but gathers up 
the total moral situation in one act, and settles the 
great strife for good and all. He must have more 
than a full forgiveness, he must have a complete re- 
demption. ... A man needs something to make 
him confident that his past sin, and the sin he is yet 
sure to commit, are all taken up into God's redemp- 
tion, and the great moral transaction of his life is 
done. The real complete forgiveness is the appro- 
priation of the world's atonement." 

The learned principal is by no means easy to 
follow. On page 78 where he says "The atone- 
ment did not procure grace ; it flowed from grace," 
he renounces ideas which simply refuse to quit 
him. 

The gist of all such teaching is this — God had 
to become a man 1 and die on a cross, or otherwise, 
as a victim to the malice of those whom, through 
his incarnation, he had made his fellows, before 
he could consent to bless our race with his saving 
mercy. (P. 177.) So in an article of his pub- 
lished as its leader by the British Weekly of Feb- 
ruary 10th, 1910, Principal Forsyth supplements 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 189 

his book by declaring — "The death of Christ was 
the active atonement made to holiness by God 
himself." 

In examining such a teaching one asks first — 
What is the holiness to which God is said to have 
made this "active atonement?" Does it reside in 
himself or outside of him? If outside of him, it 
must be greater than He, and able to command 
him; which is absurd. If within him and a part 
of his nature, then God had to propitiate a part 
of himself, or an attribute of his own, as one may 
choose to put it, by offering up a sufficient sacri- 
fice and expiation to that attribute. And each 
may think of this as he can. 

The rest of the teaching is that, apart from 
this atonement — this "sacrifice offered by God to 
holiness" — He could not, because of some obsta- 
cle existing in himself, have forgiven men at all, 
but that having made this offering, He not only 
can forgive them, but has actually forgiven every 
man's sin, past, present and to come; yet only in 
such a way that each man, to make his forgiveness 
an actual, or lasting, advantage to himself, must 
accept it on certain prescribed conditions ; other- 
wise he will be no better off than he would have 
been if he had never been forgiven at all, and prob- 
ably much worse off, because every failure to ac- 
cept will likely be treated as a wicked rejection. 
(P. 169.) 

Such a teaching raises a number of questions 
that have often been debated. To deal with any 



190 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

one of these in a satisfactory way, it is necessary 
to take some primary facts and principles into 
account. This I shall now proceed to do. And 
my thoughts, like those of Principal Forsyth, shall 
begin and end with God. 

God is man's creator. Not only did he create 
the first human pair, but he has been equally the 
creator of every individual since. For he estab- 
lished and maintains the law of reproduction, and 
the associate law that like must beget like. He 
foresaw the sin of the race before creating it. His 
perfect prevision saw sin enter the world to work 
its terrible ravages. Yet he proceeded to create, 
and proceeds still. The result, as Paul viewed 
it in his day, is that "all have sinned." God has, 
therefore, always been responsible for maintain- 
ing a race of sinners upon the earth. The work 
of nutrition going on within them, along with 
their every breath and heart-beat, are each instant 
dependent upon his will, for to them these are in- 
voluntary activities, which many of them in their 
deep misery have often wished might cease; and 
too often they have rashly stopped them. 

It is no answer to this to say that God has 
gifted each man with a conscience which tells him 
that he should not sin. For God has not asso- 
ciated with that conscience the power that can 
steadily enable the man to obey it, and so keep 
himself from sinning. Thus men in their natural 
state, according to both the Bible and universal 
experience, are sinners who cannot keep from sin- 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 191 

ning, no matter how earnestly they may strive 
to do so. Their consciences make them wretched 
in their sins, and their moral weakness makes it 
impossible for them to climb out of the horrible 
pit and miry clay in which they find themselves 
sinking. So their most sustained moral endeavor 
is but the Sisyphus-act of rolling the stone almost 
to the hill's summit, only to see it roll back to the 
foot once more, while they experience now the 
agony of strained effort, and now the bitterer 
agony of defeat. This is how the Gentile mind 
pictured the situation. A Jeremiah, on the other 
hand, cried out: 

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and it 
is desperately sick: who can know it?" (Jer. IT: 
9.) And a Paul declared' — 

"I am earthly — sold into slavery to sin 

I find myself doing the very thing that 
I hate . . . The bad thing that I want 
not to do — that I habitually do The 

action is no longer my own, but that of sin which 
is within me," and which I can by no means cast 
out. "Miserable man that I am!" 

To say that sin, with all this slavery and 
wretchedness, is hereditary, and that it can all 
be traced back to the fault of the first human 
pair, is to say too little. The thing is true, but 
it is only a small part of the truth. The great 
fact is the one which I have already noticed. The 
God who knew the end from the beginning and 
had all things m! his power, knowing men would be 



192 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

such tortured slaves if he brought them into being, 
did and does bring them into being. And it was 
he that established the law of hereditary sin. It 
was he who made it true that — 

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh," and 
gave each child over to the training of a sinful 
home and a sinful society. His own action made 
it certain that once sin entered into the world it 
would be perpetuated. Man a sinner and help- 
less to rise above his sin, though torturing himself 
on account of his wrong-doing and wrong-being, 
is the word which describes the actual moral his- 
tory of the race. And no man, since the first pair 
at least, has had any choice in the matter. On 
the contrary each has just helplessly come and 
taken his place in one of the miserable sin-cursed 
generations. 

Unless there is a personal devil with vast pow- 
ers, God alone is responsible for all. And if there 
is such a devil, then God is responsible for^ having 
created us to fall and remain under his power 
for all these thousands of years. The first human 
pair could not, in the very nature of the case, 
have been responsible for more than themselves. 
For they could neither shake off their own sin, 
when once they had fallen under it, nor prevent 
themselves from passing its crushing weight on 
to their descendants. 

But if, in the final analysis, the awful presence 
of sin among men is due to the deliberate fore- 
seeing choice of God himself in the matter ; and, 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 193 

as we have seen, there is absolutely no escape 
from this conclusion ; then there are other con- 
clusions that are equally inevitable. The first 
of these is that his act needs justification, and par- 
ticularly in view of the fact that he has treated 
sin so seriously as to convince men, through the 
conscience with which he has gifted them, that it 
ought not to exist. If sin ought not to exist, and 
yet God opened up the way for its entrance and 
long perpetuation here, then it must be further 
true that nothing can justify this act of his, 
short of some adequate effort on his part to des- 
troy sin, and bring men as a whole into that life 
of complete righteousness and holy love for which 
they feel they were meant. 

It is at this point that the New Testament 
meets us with its heavenly message, and I shall 
name five things Avhich it makes perfectly clear — 

1. God has from the beginning recognized the 
obligations under which he placed himself by the 
creation of our race. John the Revelator brings 
this fact forward when he writes of Jesus as "the 
Lamb that has been sacrificed from the founda- 
tion of the world." The writer of second Timo- 
thy calls attention to the love of God which "was 
extended to us through Christ Jesus before time 
began," or "before times eternal." And one of 
Paul's words to the Ephesians assures us that 
"He chose us in him before the creation of the uni- 
verse." This last word makes the scheme of 
man's redemption from sin older than the work of 



194 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

creation. That is to say, God counted the full 
cost from the first and took no step towards pro- 
ducing the race, which he knew would fall into 
sin, until he had devised the very scheme for its 
recovery, which filled the New Testament writers 
with such adoring wonder, and has made the book, 
into which the unambitious productions of their 
pens were soon gathered, the greatest in all litera- 
ture. 

2. Having foreordained the human career of 
his divine Son, God prepared the large central 
section of the world of mankind both religiously 
and politically for his incarnation; so that, as 
Paul states, "when the full time came, God sent 
his son." Then, when the visible work of Christ 
came to an end, that invisible agent, the Holy 
Spirit, began to use the facts of his life, death 
and resurrection in such a way as to build up 
that (with one exception) greatest and most en- 
during of earthly institutions, the Church of 
Christ. 

3. God views his sinless Son as his sufficient 
vindication before the whole universe. Fore- 
knowing all, he had created and maintained a race, 
every member of which had been a suffering, self- 
condemned sinner, whose chief wretchedness had 
grown out of the fact that no righteous I-ought- 
and-I-will of his could lift him into the place of 
purity and goodness that would satisfy even him- 
self. And there was really nothing on earth to 
show that God had anything better in store for 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 195 

the race than moral and spiritual disappointment 
and confusion — no convincing proof whatever 
that he was not either taking some secret delight 
in the frightful situation, or finding himself too 
weak or too unskillful to cope with it. A Pilate 
was being prepared to 1 ask with a levity too bitter 
to laugh, "What is truth?" The most earnest 
souls had been plagued by the thought that the 
moral government of the world was largely a 
failure and would remain so. Again and again 
they had found themselves in the deepest doubt 
as to whether anything really worth while could 
result from any man's efforts toward holiness. 

Then the child was born in Bethlehem that grew 
up unsinning, entered upon a public career on be- 
half of his people, stood for active good-will in 
every direction, and that in the face of the deep- 
est misunderstanding and malice, and died pray- 
ing for his murderers rather than swerve one 
hairsbreadth from truth and righteousness. So 
at length, as Paul puts it — 

"God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful 
flesh, and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in 
the flesh" (Rom. 8:3); to convince men, in the 
first place, that no sin whatever) had his approval, 
and that "in passing over the sins done afore- 
time," he had been exercising "forbearance," with 
the new and holy order of things continually in 
view. 

4. Justified thus in his own eyes, and also 
partly in ours, God looks towards the comple- 



196 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

tion of Christ's saving work, when he will be, not 
only justified, but also glorified in the vision of 
all. Here again it is Paul who draws aside the 
veil for us. His first word is — 

"And this God did ... as a proof, I 
repeat, at the present time, of his own righteous- 
ness that he might be righteous in our eyes." 
(Rom. 3:26.) And his second word beautifully 
supplements it — 

"As yet we see in a mirror, dimly, but then, 
when the Perfect has come — face to face. As yet 
my knowledge is incomplete, but then I shall know 
in full, as I have been fully known." (1 Cor. 
13:12). 

To these John of the Revelation adds — 

"Then I saw new heavens and a new earth 
. . . The old order has passed away." (Rev. 
21:1, 4.) 

5. God sees his Son also as the propitation 
for the sins of our whole race. This word pro- 
pitiation, used twice only in the New Testament, 
and both times in first John, looks in two direc- 
tions, perhaps — Godward and manward. God- 
ward it indicates that Jesus Christ perfectly sat- 
isfied the Father in his individual earthly life, re- 
garded both by itself and as the divine-human in- 
strument by means of which the whole race will at 
length be raised to the same satisfying height of 
sinlessness, on the one hand, and of sharing in 
the divine nature on the other. (2 Pet. 1:4.) 
Glancing manward, it notes our hostility to God 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 197 

and views Jesus Christ as the appeaser of all our 
wrath against him. (Rom. 8:7-9.) Through 
him men's understandings are being so enlight- 
ened that at length they will see that God is love, 
and will trust him wholly, with not one Job's wife 
left to utter her exhortation to renounce God and 
commit suicide. (Job. 2:9.) 

So, according to Paul, Christ is in himself the 
very place of propitiation where God and men 
are continually meeting each other, to establish 
harmonious relations, and where, before all is 
done, they will realize, through that full divine ex- 
planation of every issue involved, which resides in 
Christ himself, the completest reconciliation and 
the highest mutual satisfaction. (Rom. 3:25) 
and (2 Cor. 5:17-21.) All true gospel preachers 
proclaim this story and look towards this goal. 
It is, therefore, clear that for the question — Why 
did God create man to be miserable physically 
and morally, his conscience and will out of joint 
and the former wielding a whip of scorpions? — 
the New Testament has the answer — That he 
might save him, by bringing him into the fullest 
harmony with himself and his whole environment ; 
and when this salvation has been fully received, 
the whole race will exult in it as absolutely suf- 
ficient. (Rom. 11:25, T. C. N. T.) 

Now in view of all we have seen, what shall we 
say regarding the nature of the atonement? We 
have seen that in giving his Son to be the Savior 
of the World, God discharged to the full a self- 



198 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

imposed obligation, and was true to himself as the 
eternal source of every I-ought that was ever felt 
or uttered or acted upon in our universe. We 
whom he made to reason on righteousness, and re- 
spond to its claims, can clearly perceive the na- 
ture of this obligation. He simply could not 
have made himself the creator of our race, fore- 
seeing its fall into sin without providing for its 
recovery, and have remained righteous. On the 
other hand, as the infinitely Righteous One, he 
could not do an unrighteous thing in any direc- 
tion. Consequently he undertook our race's res- 
cue as a matter of course, and arranged for it in 
the fullest manner before beginning his work of 
creation at all. Because he is love he created 
us as 1 beings whom he would care for, and in whose 
development he might delight ; and because he is 
love he made himself also our Redeemer. 

So far all is clear. The question which as yet 
is for the most part wrapped in mystery, is how 
it was that our God, who is almighty love, found 
sin and suffering unavoidable in connection with 
his holy plans for our race. We know, however, 
that some day we shall have this problem also 
solved for us. 

As our example in obedience towards his Father, 
and thus our Savior to the uttermost, Jesus was 
compelled to lay down his life. But the thing his 
Father required was not his death but his obedi- 
ence unto death. If he could have been obedient 
to the utmost in speaking and living the truth, 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 199 

without provoking the leaders of his people to 
secure his death by crucifixion, he would have been 
our race's Savior without dying, quite as effec- 
tively as he is now. He himself represented his 
rejection and murder as the crowning act of hu- 
man wickedness along that line, and fought 
against it from the first moment he became aware 
of ,it as a peril, doing everything in his power 
both Godward and manward to avert it. It was, 
therefore, Christ's obedience to the utmost, and 
not his death considered in itself, that counted. 
The death itself was simply the worst of all mur- 
ders. But the obedience associated with it was 
necessary to our redemption to the same height 
of devotion to the will of our Father in heaven. 
It was on this account, and on this account alone, 
that Jesus laid down his life — he could not under 
the circumstances have been obedient to the ut- 
most and retained it. Failing at that point of 
the supreme test, he would have made himself a 
disobedient sinner, by turning aside from the truth 
as really as Peter did when he denied all knowl- 
edge of him. 

How then shall we truly express in brief the 
New Testament doctrine of the atonement? Shall 
we not say this? It stands for the fact that 
God gave his Son to the death of the cross (1) 
because his righteous love knew and honored its 
own obligation to provide us a Savior who could 
not fail in his task, and (2) because nothing short 
of obedience to the utmost could have fitted Jesus 



200 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Christ to be such a Savior. As representing the 
utter yielding up of one life to God on behalf of 
others, Christ's death was a sacrifice. To God 
it was a satisfaction because it represents the one 
life in which he has always rested as all it should be 
in itself, and at the same time, all that is required 
by him for the full recovery to himself of the 
whole race. It was a propitiation for the reason 
that through it the destruction of all the race's 
sin and enmity against God stands provided for. 
Because it was a perfectly righteous human life 
yielding itself up on behalf of its sinning race, it 
could be called an expiation ; and as the appointed 
means for bringing men into perfect harmony 
with God, it can be spoken of as an atonement. 
But Jesus never became any man's substitute. 
That idea is essentially immoral, and has been 
gladly abandoned. 

If all this is true — if the righteous love that 
created us could not find rest for itself except in 
redeeming us; and if that in Jesus Christ by 
means of which we are redeemed is his obedience 
to the utmost on our account; are we not war- 
ranted in saying that our God, who is love, has 
always done, is now doing, and will continue to 
do all that can be done for the further redemp- 
tion of each succeeding generation of our race, 
until he has at length lifted it into the fullest 
fellowship with himself? And are we not dark- 
ening counsel with words when we talk as if there 
was something in God himself that had to be dealt 



JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 201 

with by sacrifice, and silenced, and that by himself, 
before he could bless us with his saving grace? 
Does not the very word atonement become a stum- 
bling block, the moment it is used to convey this 
idea? When we speak of "the death of Christ 
as the active atonement made to holiness by God 
himself," or say that God has and has not for- 
given a soul at one and the same time, we use 
language of which it can be truly affirmed, that 
it neither belongs to the field of working ideas, 
nor pertains to a philosophy that makes anything 
plain. 

When one is asked to explain how the death 
of Christ, or, rather, his obedience unto death, 
is of such infinite value to us, and how God at- 
ones us with himself by means of it, he need not 
regard the answer as quite beyond our present 
reach. Christ was our example in his death 
quite as truly, and much more convincingly, than 
in his life. It has been by his obedience unto 
death that he has redeemed men up to the present. 
By means of that death the Holy Spirit enlight- 
ens, convicts, converts, cleanses and girds men 
with invincible holy might. That is why the 
New Testament declares that each believer in 
Christ is saved by his blood, and that for these 
the cross stands so distinctly in the foreground. 
Christ's obedience unto' death is God's supreme in- 
strument in lifting men from sin to righteousness. 
Had his obedience not been equal to this final test 
it would have proved a poor lever indeed, but hav- 



202 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ing triumphed then as always before, it was the 
mightiest that even God could provide himself 
with. 

Man was made to think, and to rise no higher 
than his own thought. Through Christ God is 
slowly teaching him to think in the terms of a life 
which, obeying him to the utmost, rises to sinless- 
ness, on the one hand, and the completest posi- 
tive righteousness, on the other. In saving men 
the Holy Spirit uses only each individual's I-see- 
and-I-ought, but he lifts each one to the level of 
that the moment he adopts it as his chief imme- 
diate object of desire and faith. And the high- 
est I-see-and-I-ought emanates forever from the 
cross of Christ, or rather, from the Christ of the 
cross. God made man to think and to raise him 
to the level of the highest thought he could give 
him through Jesus Christ. (1 Jno. 3:1-3.) 



XIII 
JESUS AND THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 

In Israel the priest and the prophet' could never 
agree, excepting when the priest himself was also 
a prophet. The Priest stood for the shadow, 
the Prophet for the substance; the priest for rit- 
ual, the prophet for righteousness ; the priest for 
services conducted before God, the prophet for 
services rendered to God; the priest for the out- 
ward, the prophet for the inward; the priest for 
the imagination and the emotions, the prophet 
for the intellect and the conscience as well; the 
priest for a showy ceremonial and dead offerings, 
the prophet for living, palpitating holy and right- 
eous human reality. And because the quarrel 
was deadly it brought about a contrast of its 
own. The priest murdered the prophet, and the 
prophet died for the priest; and only thus could 
the prophet redeem the priest and lead him up 
out of his shadows into the light and life of God. 
Thus it continued through the centuries, the 
priest always repenting of his father's murders 
while reddening his hands with his own, in that 
slow, conservative, yet blood-thirsty stupidity, so 
vividly portrayed by Jesus himself, when he, the 
greatest prophet of all time, found himself face 



204 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

to face with this same stupidly slow, blood-thirsty 
and murderous priest. i 

The priest and the prophet have continued 
confronting each other. They live on still, each 
bearing the same name as the other, and each pre- 
serving his own characteristics and discharging 
his own peculiar functions, precisely as in the older 
days. Once both were Israelites, then both were 
Jews, now both wear the name of Christ. But 
now, as then, the first stands for a fact outworn 
and probably also perverted, the second for the 
vital fact which is struggling up to victory to-day 
and will be crowned and reigning to-morrow. Now, 
also, as from the beginning, it is as perfectly 
natural for the first to appeal to fraud and vio- 
lence, physical and intellectual, and the second to 
make his appeal calmly and fairly to the unfet- 
tered intellect and conscience ; as it is for the first 
to claim that if you would be convinced of the au- 
thority of a fact, no matter how unjust or per- 
verted it may be, all you need do is find out that 
it had its origin very far back in the years and is 
not yet quite extinct, and for the second to es- 
pouse and proclaim his fact on the simple ground 
of its evident present and future value to the in- 
dividual and society at large. The priest arro- 
gates to himself all the respectability that exists 
anywhere, denounces the prophet as an upstart 
who never even had a father worth mentioning 
and knows that the future will be his own because 
he has already reached the place where he enjoys 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 205 

the same respect and inviolability which men ac- 
cord to the corpse that is being kept for burial! 
The priest does not believe much in burials, how- 
ever, and that for the very good and sufficient 
reason that the prophets whom he slaughters 
never stay in their graves, and that he considers 
himself much more respectably alive than any liv- 
ing prophet. But he has great faith in the prophet 
of the past. For he knows this prophet to be 
alive, though his father slew him. The prophet 
of the past is therefore his standing miracle, his 
prodigy, and more impressive to him than even 
God himself. He judges others by him- 
self. How could a clod like him be inspired? 
(How indeed!) Inspired poetically, or along 
the lines of art or science, he might be, but 
divinely inspired — never ! He dismisses the very 
thought as blasphemous. God and he have no in- 
tellectual intimacies, though he may feel sure they 
have certain emotional ones. They never see each 
other excepting across his altar fires, and then as 
much as ever — more than ever, perhaps — God is 
far off in his heaven. And how could it be dif- 
ferent with anyone else? So he can never bring 
himself to see that the prophet of the present is 
indeed the greater son of that prophet of the 
past, whose monument was erected yesterday by 
his father, or just now by himself. He knows 
no truth but old truth, and no inspiration save 
that of the past. To him the prophet of to-day 
is but a fatherless fraud who deserves nothing 



206 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

better than the worst that can possibly be meas- 
ured out to him. So in his fine respectability he 
rises to the height of misrepresenting and vilify- 
ing this prophet. In his malicious hatred he can- 
not let him alone. Growing "frantic" he pur- 
sues! him "even to strange cities," "breathing mur- 
derous threats." Meanwhile the pursued and 
persecuted protphet himself reasons, expostulates, 
entreats, making his unceasing "appeal to men of 
reason and religion," "suffers because God wills 
it so, and commits his life into the hands of a 
faithful creator." (1 Pet. 4:19.) 

The priest of each generation dies to enter upon 
the infamous immortality of the persecutor 
and murderer of the prophet, secured for him by 
that son of his who builds the prophet's monu- 
ment, and writes the inscription on it in enduring 
brass. The prophet, on the other hand, can 
scarcely be said to die. Rather he lives on, mur- 
dered though he may have been, wears a crown, 
and enjoys the homage and obedience of a con- 
stantly increasing number. 

This irrepressible conflict between priest and 
prophet began early. Its echoes have reverberated 
in every land which has been distinguished by 
great and rapid progress. There have been 
priests and prophets of science and philosophy 
as well as of religion. And the priest and prophet 
in politics constituted in Israel, as they do also 
to-day, as stern a fact almost as the priest and 
prophet in religion; for whether we take due ac- 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 207 

count of it or not, the one actual form of govern- 
ment is the theocracy, where every human legis- 
lator, judge and magistrate, including the sov- 
ereign himself, is but an official under law to 
God. There is absolutely no escape from this 
situation. God holds peoples and their officials 
alike in the place of strictest accountability to 
himself during every moment of their worthy or 
unworthy tenure of the positions he gives them. 

I am now to deal in a particular rather than 
a general way with the priest and prophet in 
their relations to the sacrificial system which ob- 
tained under Mosaism, and point out, if I can, 
how Jesus stands associated with that system. 

Jesus is at once "the Apostle and High Priest 
of our Religion." (Heb. 3:1.) Just because he 
is the High Priest, he is also the apostle — the 
man sent, approved and sustained by God to 
speak for him as his Prophet. The Priest and 
the Prophet are always united when both are well 
informed and faithful. Under Mosaism the priest 
went wrong. It was his departure from reality 
which put him in a class by himself and precipi- 
tated that conflict between him and the prophet 
which I have been indicating. In Jesus both of- 
fices were blended and harmonized. This is not 
very clearly recognized. I shall begin here by 
pointing out the nature of the conflict between 
the two in Israel itself. In doing this it will be 
necessary for me to go no further than quote 
from two or three of Israel's strong prophets. 



208 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

I shall begin with the great classical passage 
in Micah — "Wherewith shall I come before the 
Lord, and bow myself before the high God? 
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with 
calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased 
with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands 
of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for 
my transgression, the fruit of my body for the 
sin of my soul? 

"He hath showed me, Oh man, what is good; 
and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God?" Here undoubtedly the substitu- 
tionary idea of sacrifice is most strongly con- 
demned, the prophet going even so far as to make 
the horrible suggestion that when a man has once 
struck out on that line he should rest only after 
he has offered up his own son — his best and dear- 
est possession. He then declares that such sub- 
stitutionary sacrifices can find no basis in the 
mind and will of God. Jehovah wanted his wor- 
shiper himself. He wanted his conscience, his 
intellect, his will, his loving devotion, the service 
of all his powers in doing all the good among his 
fellows that might lie within his reach. What to 
God were thousands of rams or ten thousands of 
•rivers of oil compared with that? And what to 
God was the man who went the length of present- 
ing his son as a substitutionary sacrifice but a 
murderer ? 

This last thought is the one which seems to 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 209 

have gripped the mind of Isaiah in such a painful 
way. He writhes in agony as he writes in right- 
eous rage — 

"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of So- 
dom : Give ear unto the law of our God, ye people 
of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude 
of your sacrifices unto me? Saith the Lord: I 
am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the 
fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood 
of bullocks or of lambs or of he-goats. When 
ye come to appear before me, who hath required 
this at your hand, to trample my courts? Bring 
no more empty oblations . . . your hands 
are full of blood." Your substitutionary idea, 
which has led you to thrust your bloody offerings 
before me, instead of your own reverently wor- 
shiping, devotedly obedient and lovingly right- 
eous selves, has made your very slaughter of 
your sacrificial beasts an abominable series of 
murders. "Bring no more empty oblations ; in- 
cense is an abomination unto me; new moon and 
sabbath, the calling of assemblies — I cannot away 
with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new 
moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; 
they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear 
them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I 
will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make 
many prayers, I will not hear : your hands are full 
of blood. 

"Wash you, make you clean; put away the 
evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease 



210 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgment, re- 
lieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead 
for the widow." (Isa. 1 :10-17.) 

Coming down across the centuries we find the 
priest still standing for a worship and a holiness 
which were the poorest of blasphemous shams, 
and the second Isaiah exposing him in the very 
spirit of the first — 

"To this man will I look, saith the Lord, even 
to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and 
that trembleth at my word. He that killeth an 
ox" (as a substitutionary offering) "is as he that 
slayeth a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as he 
that breaketh a dog's neck; he that offereth an 
oblation as he that offereth swine's blood; he 
that burnetii frankincense, as he that blesseth an 
idol: yea, they have chosen their own ways, and 
their soul delighteth in their abominations." (Isa. 
66:3, 4.) And thus the situation continued, 
men destroying their own souls and committing 
spiritual suicide in connection with the most sa- 
cred rites of their religion. And thus it was found 
by Jesus himself and those who after him laid 
the foundations of the Christian church. 

We are not left in any doubt on the question 
whether Jesus sided with the priest or the prophet 
in the long controversy. His whole life and teach- 
ing were those of the greatest of all the prophets. 
He would let no man put anything whatever in 
the place of the personal righteousness of high 
ideals and an unceasing struggle for their at- 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 211 

tainment which his own life exemplified. For the 
weakest striver he had the tenderest compassion 
and the most abounding encouragements, but his 
word for those who would not enter the holy 
strife was "judgment," while that for the wicked 
loiterer was, "I know you not." And when he 
was called upon to express himself on the very 
point before us he did so by quoting from Hosea 
6:6, with a reference to 1 Sam. 15:22, where the 
words are given in which the prophet adminis- 
tered his rebuke to Saul, when that king at- 
tempted to atone for his royal disobedience by 
slaughtering in sacrifice thousands of bullocks 
and sheep — 

"Go and learn what this means — 
'I desire mercy and not sacrifice' " — 

a godlike manhood and no substitute for it what- 
ever. 

The disciples of Jesus were continually so ham- 
pered by the priestly idea that they took in but 
slowly the full meaning of their Lord's life and 
words, and the full meaning of their Lord's life and 
death. In their writings the mighty fact set 
forth by the prophet is often badly blurred by 
the misty pretensions of the priest. I shall not 
attempt here to make anything like a full expo- 
sition of this feature of the New Testament, but 
content myself with briefly indicating it. More 
than a dozen theories of the atonement have re- 
sulted from this entanglement of ideas in the 



212 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

apostolic mind, and not wholly from an inca- 
pacity for clear thinking on the part of subse- 
quent Christian theologians. "This treasure we 
have in these earthen vessels, that its all-prevail- 
ing power may be seen to come from God, and not 
to be our own" (2 Cor. 4:7), is a word of Paul 
regarding his own limitations and those of his 
fellow apostles and Christian co-workers gener- 
ally; and it looked in directions which he did not 
perhaps have in mind when he wrote it, though 
he was well aware always that he was seeing "in 
a mirror, dimly," and that his knowledge was in- 
complete and his preaching incomplete. (1 Cor. 
13:12, 9.) To see dimly is to perceive cloudily, 
and even misleadingly ; and no teacher can 1 instruct 
more clearly than he can see the things which he 
attempts to convey to other minds. That the 
writer of 2nd Peter recognized a pronounced 
cloudiness in Paul's writings he makes abundantly 
evident in these words — 

"There are some things in them difficult to un- 
derstand, etc." The precise point of this writer 
is that the reader of Paul's writings needed to be 
well versed in the facts and main purpose of 
Christianity, and firmly established in his own 
experience of salvation through Jesus Christ, be- 
fore giving himself safely to the perusal of some 
parts of Paul's letters. And if this was true of 
the most intellectual and most thoroughly schooled 
apostle of all, it can surely be no offense against 
the rest to say that the cloudiness which hinders 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 213 

our progress, when we attempt to get a clear 
idea of the system of thought which lies behind 
their words, is more than apparent. They found 
the treasure too vast to be set forth by them in 
an orderly fashion, and in such a way that each 
portion of it could be distinctly seen and duly 
appreciated. And perhaps the old priestly con- 
ception of things proved more disabling to them 
than any other thing that can be named. 

In Peter and John and above all in Paul we 
see the great truth represented by the prophets, 
including Jesus himself struggling and stumbling 
towards adequate expression through the rivers 
of blood shed b}^ the animal victims of the priest, 
and the blinding smoke from his altars, or 
through the mists which enveloped the proceed- 
ings of the Roman law courts ; and never abso- 
lutely arriving, excepting in such a glorious pas- 
sage as — 

"But all this was the work of God, who recon- 
ciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us 
the ministry of Reconciliation — to proclaim that 
God, in Christ, was reconciling the world to him- 
self, not reckoning men's offences against them, 
and that he had entrusted us with the Message 
of this reconciliation." (2 Cor. 5 :18, 19.) With 
the second Paul, who wrote the letter to the 
Hebrews, it was different. He, too, struggled 
and stumbled as he carried his message, but at 
length he arose to stumble no more, and arrived 
at the viewpoint from which he read the con- 



214 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

sciousness of Jesus as no man before him had done, 
and as few have done since. 

It is interesting to note that as soon as he got 
this vision he found the text for his discourse in 
the Old Testament. So human was the heart of 
Jesus into which he gazed, that he found himself 
able to put into his lips without change of any 
kind some words of the fortieth Psalm which he 
took from the Septuagint version. Hence we 
read — 

"When he was coming into the world the Christ 
declared — 'Sacrifice and offering thou dost not 
desire, but thou hast provided for me a body. 
Thou dost take no pleasure in burnt offerings 
and sacrifices for sin. So I said, "See, I have 
come" (as is written of me in the pages of the 
Book), "To do thy will, O God.' " 

"First," he writes, "come the words — 'Thou 
dost not desire, nor dost thou take pleasure in, 
sacrifices, offerings, burnt offerings, and sacri- 
fices for sin' (offerings regularly made under the 
Law) and then there is added — 'See, I have come 
to do thy will.' The former sacrifices are set aside 
to be replaced by the latter." (Heb. 10:5-9.) 

"He taketh away the first that he may estab- 
lish the second" is the reading of the authorized 
version. With this reading the revision of 1881 
entirely agrees. The Twentieth Century tenta- 
tive edition paraphrases thus — "The former 
statement is set aside to be replaced by the lat- 
ter." Weymouth's New Testament in Modern 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 215 

Speech gives us, "He does away with the first in 
order to establish the second;" while Lloyd in 
his Corrected English New Testament places this 
passage before us word for word as we have al- 
ready seen it in the authorized and revised ver- 
sions — "He taketh away the first that he may es- 
tablish the second." 

Now what does this writer indicate by "the 
first" and "the second?" Does "the first" stand 
for the priestly idea of substitutionary offerings, 
and "the second" for the prophet's idea that the 
one offering and sacrifice acceptable to God is 
the offerer himself in all his various capacities 
for worship and service? Or does he mix and 
mingle and confuse things, so that his readers 
must still keep asking with which of more than a 
dozen theories of the atonement he stands asso- 
ciated? We shall see. 

I refuse to devour time here in an attempt to 
find a safe way through the theory-permeated 
intricacies of the various translations which lie 
before me. No man can ever set forth God's 
truth, or anybody else's, in a translation, until 
that truth lies in still lake-like clearness in his 
own mind and heart. Nothing can be more mis- 
leading than texts which have been thrown out of 
all true perspective by the violence which has been 
quite unconsciously visited upon them by dogma- 
burdened translators. Our writer indicates the 
successive steps and processes by means of which 
a sinner may move up from the horrible pit and 



216 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

miry clay of his iniquities into the loftiest abid- 
ing places of saint-hood. What are these steps 
and processes? Let us follow him as he points 
them out. 

The first step is that of entering into the will 
of God as he sees Jesus himself did — in desire and 
purpose, first, and then as occasion and oppor- 
tunity arise, in word and deed. It is by this 
will of God that we are purified, sanctified, set 
apart for a life of strength and sweetness, of 
powerful acts and tenderest compassions, like that 
of him whose followers we become the moment we 
enter into that will after him. 

Each sinner who takes this step, takes it be- 
cause he has become the subject of a process which 
is set up and maintained by God himself. The 
salvation of mankind has its place in the educa- 
tional programme of the universe. Jesus Christ 
is the supreme' object lesson in the way of a prop- 
erly ordered human life. In him there were gath- 
ered up and centered all that was true and vic- 
torious in the life of men as that life ought to 
be, and in the principles which should govern it. 
The very heart of his heart was a love, which was 
absolutely without limit. Every sinner loves to 
be loved, and most of all to be loved by the holi- 
est, not so much in spite of, as because of, the fact, 
which is so painfully clear to himself, that he is 
bad and hopelessly lost as far as self-rescue is 
concerned. Mother love, wife love, child love, 
have a certain redeeming power, but the source 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 217 

of them all, as represented by God in Christ, far 
surpasses them in their best possible combina- 
tion. The holiest love must always be the 
mightiest. To look upon the holiest love, and to 
perceive that its infinite eyes, fixed upon me, and 
overflowing with tears because I am not holy too, 
but sinful and unworthy and undone, are forever 
those of him whose human hands, reached down 
for my uplifting, I nailed to the cross, and that 
those same pierced hands, mightier than ever, are 
gripping me even now to carry me up out of all 
my sins and miseries ; is to realize to some extent 
that this same holiness of love is being carved 
deeply upon my consciousness, as the one law 
which embraces all the legislation which should 
govern my life now and always. It was because 
our writer vividly realized this for himself that 
he was so deeply impressed by these words from 
Jeremiah 31 :33 — 

"This is the Covenant that I will make with them 

After those days/' says the Lord: 
"I will impress my laws on their hearts 

And will inscribe them on their minds." 

Now, also, because he perceived a certain se- 
quence, hidden from the priest but clear and un- 
mistakable to the prophet, he broke Jeremiah's 
word into two portions, and presented these in sep- 
aration from each other. This is how he put his 
case — "We have also the testimony of the Holy 
Spirit. For, after saying — 'This is my cove- 



218 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

riant, etc,' then we have — 'And their sins and 
their iniquities I will no longer remember.' " 

Now if this language means anything at all, 
it meansj that in the opinion of this writer, the one 
condition upon which God forgives sins is the 
sinner's complete surrender and consecration to 
his will. And he teaches that this surrender and 
consecration are a human act, on the one hand, 
and the outcome of a divine process, on the other. 
The sinner surrenders and consecrates himself 
to God's will, because God has made that will ap- 
pear the supreme thing to him. When this act 
of surrender and consecration has been definitely 
entered into, God writes his will still more defi- 
nitely and deeply upon both heart and mind. 
And when he has by this process actually blotted 
out the sins of the man, then and not till then, he 
lifts up the light of his countenance upon him' and 
blesses him with the peace which passes all under- 
standing. That is to say, God never proceeds 
blindly in his work of saving a man, never takes 
anything for granted, never leaves anything un- 
done which needs doing, never deceives himself at 
any point ; and he never slights or deceives the 
man with whom he is dealing, but demands and 
obtains the exercise of out and out good faith 
both in Himself and in the sinner whom he is 
transforming into one of his saints. And this 
clear teaching alone is true to fact. All else is 
either mystifying or wholly false. 

Forgiveness means the breaking forth of God's 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 219 

smile upon the sinner and the breaking by God 
of the enslaving chains of his sins, when with much 
heartbreak or with little he has turned his back 
upon his wrong past to enter into the whole will 
of God so far as that will has become known to 
him. God's forgiveness is no cold legal trans- 
action. It is glowingly personal and throbbingly 
heart to heart. It is a purely Thou and I act 
and experience. It is the Father's rapturous em- 
brace of his son who was lost, and the joyful cry 
— "I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord; for 
though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is 
turned away, and thou comfortest me. Behold, 
God is my salvation ; I will trust and not be 
afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and 
my song: and he is become my salvation." (Isa. 
12:1-3.) 

"Free from the Law, O happy condition," etc., 
is a song in which the priest rejoices in the se- 
curity and peace of his refuge of lies. The 
prophet dwelling in the place of real safety be- 
side his Lord and Master, sings instead the very 
words of that Master himself as they appear in 
the Hebrew version of the Old Testament — 

"I delight to do thy will, O my God; 
Yea, thy lam is within my heart/' (Psa. 40:8.) 

"My God, the spring of all my Joys, 
The life of my delights, 
The glory of my brightest days 
And comfort of my nights." 



220 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

"Long my imprisoned spirit lay, 
Fast bound in sin and nature's night; 
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray; 
I woke ; the dungeon flamed with light ; 
My chains fell off, my heart was free; 
I rose, went forth and followed Thee." 

The prophet rejoices in God and in his law, be- 
cause he has been brought into the life of obedi- 
ent service towards God, knows that he is co- 
working with God, and that through entering into 
his will, he has entered into Himself, where his 
life is hid with Christ in God. He does not live 
in fiction but in fact, and his holiness is not con- 
structive or imaginary but real — the very holi- 
ness of God, translated into the terms of our ig- 
norance and weakness, to be sure, but growingly 
worthy of its source. 

So our author is perfectly consistent when, 
coming to a definite discussion of the faith which 
saves men, he makes no mention of their past sins 
or the consequences and penalties connected with 
them. His face is not towards the past at all, 
like that of the priest. He had heard his Mas- 
ter's — 

"Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their 
dead." (Matt. 8:22.) In his view, to be a fol- 
lower of Jesus was not to mourn over one's low 
past and plead for an impossible remission of 
the penalties attached to its sins, but to break 
away from it utterly and at once, and, with his 
face towards the glowing light, join his Lord in 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 221 

his heartily chosen and divinely given task. So 
his definition of "faith" declares it to be "the hu- 
man substructure, foundation, or source of things 
hoped for, and a conviction of the reality of 
things which we do not see." (Heb. 11:1.) As 
he brings before us the name and deed of each of 
his long list of noted men of faith we gather the 
characteristics of this faith from the things which 
it wrought through them, and are prepared to 
say that it is (1) the vision of God as the teacher, 
inspirer and enabler of men in connection with the 
accomplishment of his vast redeeming purposes, 
(2) the quitting of sin and lower good for the 
highest life and service to which men are called, 
and (3) a hearty consecration to God's whole will 
as far as it is known. In other words, saving 
faith is the source of the highest devotion and the 
most glorious achievement — the very heart of 
hearts of the hero and the saint. A vast cloud of 
such heroes and saints of the past surrounds us, 
he declares, but we are to fix our gaze, not on any 
one of these, but on Jesus. He far surpasses 
them all. He is "the File-leader, the Prince 
Leader, the Leader and Perfect Example of, or 
in, our faith" — our religion of enthusiastic devo- 
tion to the whole will of God, and blessed expe- 
rience of his purifying and enabling grace. So 
in his view that faith of Abraham, which "was re- 
garded by God as righteousness," was so regarded 
because it was righteousness itself — righteous- 
ness in vision, in desire, in purpose, in consecra- 



222 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

tion, in endeavor — the one human substructure 
or source for all possible righteousness of word 
and deed. So also is the faith of each truly 
Christian believer — each true son of Abraham. 
All true faith is the faith of Jesus. Abraham saw 
Jesus's day because he devoted himself to God's 
will in the same manner, though so much less per- 
fectly; and he was glad with the gladness of one 
whom God, therefore, acknowledged as his friend, 
while Jesus rejoiced with the larger joy arising 
from being owned by God as his Son. 

This idea of Jesus as our Leader and Perfect 
Example is made very prominent in this letter. 
Indeed, when the writer deals with the saving 
efficacy of the life of Jesus as that life stands 
related to ours, he places it in the very forefront. 
It is through this leadership that he is our 
Savior at all, and through this leadership that 
he is our Savior into Heaven itself. When this 
writer took up the unchangeableness of God's 
purpose and the unchangeableness of that oath 
which God took when he swore by himself, as an 
absolutely safe ground for our human hope, he 
declared that — 

"This hope is a very anchor for our souls, 
secure and strong, and it 'reaches into the Sanc- 
tuary that lies behind the Curtain,' where Jesus, 
our Forerunner, has entered on our behalf." 
(Chap. 6:16-20.) He says again — 

"For it was not into a sanctuary made by 
human hands, which merely foreshadowed the 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 223 

true one, that Christ entered, but into Heaven 
itself, that he might appear in the presence of 
God on our behalf." (Chap. 9 -M.) And finally 
he says — 

"Therefore, Brothers, we may enter the Sanc- 
tuary with confidence, in virtue of the blood of 
Jesus, by the way which he inaugurated for us — 
a new and living way, a way through the Sanc- 
tuary Curtain (that is, his human nature)." 
(Chap. 10:19, 20.) I 

Now what is the gist of this teaching? May 
it not be expressed thus? Our human nature, 
because of its sinfulness, existed as an excluding 
curtain to prevent us from entering heaven. 
The Son of God became Jesus, the Son of Mary, 
and in this manner placed the curtain of our 
human nature between him and heaven. But by 
conquering its sinfulness, by "offering himself up 
to God as a victim without blemish," he opened 
up a way, a way which no man had ever trod be- 
fore, "a new and living way," the way of years 
of unbroken, living human devotion to the will 
of his Father, terribly difficult though that de- 
votion became, and so passed into heaven "with 
his own blood," his life of utter consecration, 
not as our substitute (who wants a substitute 
when the problem and prospect is that of getting 
into heaven?) but "on our behalf" as our Fore- 
runner, "Our Leader," our Opener of the Way. 
And what is the rest of the story but that God 
in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, 



224 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and is reconciling the world to himself that he 
may lead to glory many sons, whom Jesus will 
not be ashamed to call his brothers, since each 
one of them will "by virtue of his blood" — his 
life of utter consecration to his Father — have 
passed for himself through this new and living 
way of utter obedience to God, which Jesus so 
gloriously inaugurated. This way was an ab- 
solute fact for him and only relatively so for 
us. But our hearts are reassured when we turn 
again to the words of Paul — 

"God, in Christ, was (and is) reconciling the 
world to himself, not reckoning mens offenses 
against them." God requires of each man only 
as much as through his help he can render. 

A truer word was never written than this of 
Principal Forsyth in his Cruciality of the Cross — ■ 
"The atonement does not procure grace, it flows 
from grace." It was because God loves us that 
Jesus died on the cross, and not because Jesus 
died on the cross that God loves us. This com- 
pelling, transforming, holy, reasonable and al- 
lowance-making love is the one ultimate fact. 
God is love. 

What then is the relation borne by Jesus 
to the sacrificial system? The true one — the 
one maintained by the prophet against the priest 
through all the generations. No offering pre- 
sented by man can ever be substutionary, for the 
simple reason that God can never cheat himself 
out of his own rights. The continuous Creator 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 225 

of sinful men makes no claim upon them for any 
further response to his holiness than that which 
he inspires and enables them to reach. By his 
own choice he is engaged in the age-long work 
of lifting them out of their sin into his own 
holiness, out of their iniquity into his own recti- 
tude. Slowly he has been giving height to their 
moral standards ; and that this slow progress 
may be as rapid as possible, he has given his 
divine Son to be our human Leader and Perfect 
Example. His sacrifice was an offering up of 
himself in a life of obedience to the utmost. He 
attempted no substitution on his own account but 
turned away from it with his whole heart and 
soul. He did this as our Forerunner. He did 
away with the first; he established the second. 
It was when he offered up himself as a sacrifice 
to God in an obedience which was unto death 
that he became our Prince Leader. We are true 
followers of his when we also enter into the whole 
will of God as far and as fast as it becomes' known 
to us. True religion is no empty dream. We 
are members of this new yet ancient order of 
sacrificing priests when we completely obey Paul's 
exhortation — 

"I entreat you then, Brothers, by the mercies 
of God, to offer your bodies as a living holy sacri- 
fice, acceptable to God, for this is your rational 
worship." (Rom. 12:1.) 

In religion, as in everything else, all that is 
irrational is also false. The one absolutely re- 



226 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

quired condition of forgiveness is acceptance of 
God's whole will as far as it is known. First 
God's law written on the heart, then God's for- 
giveness. 

Before closing here we may, I think, get a 
clear glimpse of the true use and advantage of 
the ancient sacrificial system, and so of the un- 
speakable benefits arising from the sacrifice which 
Jesus, the Son of God, made of himself on our 
behalf. It has always been, and it is to-day, 
the intention and spirit of the offerer which de- 
termine whether his offering is to prove a bless- 
ing or a curse to him. Abel's sacrifice was ac- 
cepted and Cain's rejected by God with strict 
reference to the thought and temper of each. 
So was it also with Abraham, on the one hand, 
and King Saul on the other. Let us seek for 
the difference between these worshipers. 

The outstanding rule touching living offerings 
was that they should be perfect representatives 
of their kind. If the offering was a bullock, he 
had to be a perfect bullock; if a lamb, it had to 
be a perfect lamb. Each was required to rep- 
resent the life of its kind at its best, and so to 
be fitted to suggest to the mind of the offerer, 
in the most lively way, the idea and duty of a 
perfect life before God on his own account. 

Now each offerer would necessarily maintain 
one of three possible attitudes towards the per- 
fect offering which he presented. The man who 
was a pure formalist would present his offering 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 227 

with no other thought than that his act held a 
proper and rightful place in connection with the 
observances of his religion ; and when he was 
through with his part of the ceremony he would 
retire with a comfortable sense of duty done. 
The other two would think more deeply, yet their 
thoughts would be the very antipodes of each 
other. The thought of one would be the thought 
of the priest, the thought of the other the 
thought of the prophet. The man with the 
priest's thought would bring his perfect offering 
and say — "O my God, I am imperfect and sinful 
and must so remain, but I have come with the per- 
fect offering appointed by thyself. Graciously 
accept me as I am in view of its perfect merits, 
even as thou hast promised and agreed to do. 
Be as good as thy word, holy Lord God !" And 
this man with the priest's thought in him would 
see nothing absurd, outrageous or blasphemous 
in his prayer. On the contrary it would strike 
him as being quite modestly and reverently 
orthodox ! 

Eut see ! the man with the prophet's thought 
has come with his perfect offering. Listen! for 
he is in the attitude of prayer — 

"Blessed be thy name, O God of my salvation, 
who hast heard my prayer and been merciful to 
me. All my help comes from thee. Thou dost 
strengthen me to fulfill thy word and keep thy 
law. Thou dost comfort me greatly, lifting up 
the light of thy countenance upon me. Yet my 



228 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

way is not perfect before thee, and it is with 
earnest desire and humility that I present to thee 
this perfect offering, for it tells me that nothing 
befits me short of a like perfection. 'Teach 
me and guide me.' 'Let the words of my mouth 
and the meditations of my heart all become ac- 
ceptable in thy sight, O Lord my Strength and 
my Redeemer.' ' Or, coming for the first time, 
he cries — "God be merciful to me a sinner, and 
lead me into thy whole will." 

This man's perfect bullock and lamb awaken 
in him the cry for and the expectation of a like 
perfection. Neither is, or can ever be, accepted 
in his place. Under God's righteous rule there 
can be no substitutions. A beast's perfections 
accepted by God in the place of a man's ! Yet 
the perfections of the beast can give to the man 
very convincing testimony that he should place 
nothing short of perfection before himself as his 
goal. And this was the highest office given by 
God to the ancient sacrificial system. It was to 
be a continual reminder that the God who had 
co-worked with the perfect beast in the attain- 
ment of its perfection, was also co-working with 
every man whose heart cried out after a com- 
plete human life as its chief good next to God 
himself. And because the perfection of the brute 
was too low to sufficiently inspire this desire and 
encourage this expectation in us, God gave us 
his Son to be our perfect human example and 
representative. And it is through inspiring and 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 229 

encouraging to victory our desire for a perfect 
life before God, that Jesus becomes our Savior 
to the uttermost. (Heb. 10:14-22.) The priest 
has called him our substitute and has thus largely 
robbed him of his glory by robbing his obedience 
unto death of its largest and worthiest results. 
But the day of the Christian prophet is fast 
dawning. We are moving up out of the shadows 
into Christlike reality. 

Under the Christianity of Jesus Christ, 
as set forth in this portion of the letter to 
the Hebrews, the genuine Christian is the 
prophet who is a priest, and the priest who 
is also a prophet. Peter had the same idea. 
Listen ! — 

"Come to Jesus then, as to a living stone, re- 
jected indeed, by men, but in God's eyes choice 
and precious ; and, as living stones, form your- 
selves into a spiritual House, to be a consecrated 
Priesthood, for the offering of spiritual sacri- 
fices that will be acceptable to God through Jesus 
Christ." (I Pet. 2:4, 5.) Peter saw, too, that 
this new order of prophet-priests or priest- 
prophets was the true Israel and therefore, the 
very heart of the Kingdom of God upon earth, 
Listen again — 

"But you are 'a chosen race, a royal priest- 
hood, a consecrated nation, God's own People,' 
entrusted with the proclamation of the goodness 
of him who called you out of Darkness into his 
wonderful Light." (I Pet. 2:9.) To this also 



230 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the writer of The Revelation gives his heartiest 
assent — 

"He made us 'a Kingdom of Priests in the serv- 
ice of God,' his Father." (Rev. 1:6.) (See also 
5:9, 10.) 

Naturally the final conclusion of this second 
Paul is that the sacrifice which Jesus made of 
himself was the final representative one. The 
beast was too poor, but The Man left nothing 
further to be accomplished. He had constituted 
in himself all that God required him to be as a 
man living his own personal life. He had entered 
into the whole will of his Father on his own ac- 
count. He had entered into it also as the Fore- 
runner and Prince Leader of the race. He had 
made it at once the duty and the privilege of 
each man to enter into that will after him. 
Growing numbers were actually doing this with 
their whole hearts and souls. As priests under 
Jesus, our "great High Priest," each of these 
had made or was still making, a complete sacri- 
fice of himself, including his body, to God. It 
was in view of this fact in its initial stage that 
God had forgiven them, and so would it be to 
the very end with all who would take the same 
path. 

That loss of the sense of sin over which many 
are mourning to-day, is rather a fact for re- 
joicing. This sense of sin belongs to the priest. 
To him it has been a great asset and he has often 
cultivated it in others for his own material en- 



THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM £31 

richment. We remember Eli's arrogant sons 
and their flesh-hook with three prongs, which they 
did not always care to use. (I Sam. 2:12-17.) 
We recall also some more recent history. In the 
place of this abidingly distressing sense of sin in 
Christendom, there is fast waking up the genu- 
ine Christian prophet's passion for righteousness, 
individual and social. So men are all the time 
becoming more practically and, therefore, more 
truly the followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
This fact will require the attention of a separate 
chapter. 

Some one may say that this chapter is a plea 
for the moral influence theory of the atonement. 
How we delight to label the infinite with our 
pretty little tags ! This chapter has been writ- 
ten in advocacy of the physical, intellectual, 
emotional, volitional, moral, spiritual, human and 
divine fact of the whole saving work of him 
who said through his prophet, and then through 
his Son — "I desire mercy and not sacrifice" — a 
glorious Christlike humanity, and nothing what- 
ever in lieu of it. God has of his own motion 
been making men as they are, and he has at the 
same time been making them through Jesus 
Christ all he wishes them to be. He has been 
much hindered by our false notions. But the 
whole work is his and he will carry it to its full 
completion. 



XIV 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 

The eye of the priest is forever on each sinful 
past as it matures. It is on this account that he 
can never close his confessional, or leave his 
penances behind him, or consider his sacrificial 
rites at an end. He fancies he can make each 
wrong past right, or cover it up from the eyes 
of God, by means of the substitutionary "sacrifice 
oblation and satisfaction" which he offers. He 
may even fancy that divine forgiveness means the 
complete removal of sin's penalty. But deliver- 
ance from a life of conscious sinning he regards 
as a practical impossibility. He must always 
have a bad past to deal with. 

The prophet knows better. Proceeding scien- 
tifically, that is to say, dismissing all arbitrary 
theorizing and all crooked textual interpreta- 
tions, he notes the facts of life as they appear 
upon its very surface even, and knows that no 
divine forgiveness ever breaks the indissoluble 
bond with which God himself has joined sin and 
suffering for the present life at least, and there- 
fore that the afflicting and disabling effects of 
each man's sins can be traced in his body, his 
intellect and his painfully accusing conscience, 



JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 233 

after his forgiveness as well as before it. The 
prophet can also warn the forgiven sinner that 
some of the consequences of his sins may curse 
his offspring, and even some of his acquaintances 
and their descendants, for generations ; and that 
his own deliverance in the same directions, so far 
as it is possible at all, can be reached only 
through the steady observance by himself of 
God's various laws for the health of the body, 
the mind and the conscience. But he knows, too, 
that our salvation from lives of conscious sinning 
is a most prominent and essential part of the re- 
deeming work of Jesus. 

The divine forgiveness of sins is first of all a 
deliverance from sinning. It leaves no drunkard 
still a slave to his cups, no debauchee in thraldom 
to his vices, and no sinner whatever the bondman 
it found him. God accomplishes this deliverance 
by addressing himself through the morally 
awakened intellect to the affections and the will. 
Through causing the sinner to perceive the utter 
badness of sin in the light of his own holy love, 
he changes his enjoyment of it into discomfort, 
and his dislike of goodness in its chief demands 
into such a longing for it as cannot be satisfied 
short of complete obedience to God. Along with 
this revelation of sin and holiness God shows him- 
self in Jesus as everywhere present to "set free 
from the control of Sin" the sinner in whom he 
is at work, and cause him to "become a servant to 
Righteousness." (Rom. 6:18.) Thus encour- 



234 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

aged by the divine inworking the sinner delivers 
himself over to God's will as far as he knows it 
through Jesus, and "recognizes the truth that 
his old self is crucified with Christ, in order that 
the body, the stronghold of Sin, may be rendered 
powerless, so that he may no longer be a slave 
to Sin." (Rom. 6:6.) Then the testimony he 
and his fellow believers adopt is this — 

"Thank God, there is deliverance through 
.Jesus Christ, Our Lord. . . . What the law 
could not do, in so far as our earthly nature 
weakened its action, God did, by sending his Son, 
with a nature resembling our sinful na- 
ture. . . . He condemned sin in that earthly 
nature, so that the requirements of the Law might 
be satisfied in us who live now in obedience, not to 
our earthly natures, but to the Spirit. There 
is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who 
are in union with Christ Jesus ; for through our 
union with Christ Jesus the Law of the life-giv- 
ing Spirit has set us free from the Law of Sin 
and Death." (Rom. 7:25; 8:1-4.) 

I have placed the first verse of the eighth 
chapter last here to show as clearly as possible 
the precise nature and force of Paul's reasoning. 
His teaching at this point is the same as that of 
the tenth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. 
He could not write of saving faith without se- 
rious obscurity, but he could read its holy fruits 
out of his own lofty experience. By its means 
he had been brought into "union with Christ 



JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 235 

Jesus." By God's lovingkindness he had been 
saved through it. (Eph. 2:8.) "By God's 
lovingkindness," that is to say, he had through 
it been introduced to the place where he found 
himself constantly united with Jesus in the de- 
claration to God himself — i 

"See, I have come to do thy will." (Heb. 10 :9.) 
He had passed out of both God's condemnation 
and his own, because he had through Jesus passed 
out of his life of sinning. God's frown and his 
own rested upon the evil past which he had for- 
saken. That could never, of course, be other- 
wise, while he and God remained holy. Neither, 
while he and God remained holy, could it ever be 
otherwise than that they should both smile upon 
his present. He had ceased to belong to his past 
through quitting it for an ever-living present of 
devotion to the holy will of God. Through yield- 
ing himself up to all the requirements of this will 
that were known to him, he had been taken up 
into it, and by it had been purified, sanctified, or 
set apart for a life of obedient doing and suffer- 
ing, like that of Jesus himself. (Heb. 10:10.) 
And how could God deny his approval to the 
character, which, as the God of salvation, it was 
his special work to impart? And did not God 
demand of him that he also should give it his ap- 
proval? 

I have taken pains to elaborate this point be- 
cause the self-approval of Christ-like men is still 
viewed with grave suspicion by influential lead- 



A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ers of Christian thought. And I cannot pass 
away from it without a further word. Where is 
there one syllable of apostolic warrant for the cul- 
tivation of a guilty self-accusing spirit? The 
man who answers that the seventh chapter of 
Romans certainly furnishes it, is a man who can 
believe it possible for a Christian to live in that 
experience and the experience of the eighth chap- 
ter at one and the same time; and not only pos- 
sible but necessary. To him holiness of charac- 
ter may strike desire through and through, but 
never the dispositions or ! the will. He thinks that 
the joy of salvation arises from the conviction 
that some one else was holy in our place, with a 
holiness which on the one condition of humble 
trust avails for us all, because it is imputed to 
each believer in all its fullness. We are holy 
for the most part by proxy. It is ours "to ex- 
ult in God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord," not 
because through his obedience unto death we have, 
by the divine spirit, been brought into the com- 
pletest conscious reconciliation or harmony with 
God, but because he died in our place! and was 
raised again for our justification. God pro- 
nounces us righteous while he knows we are no 
such thing, but still the bond-slaves of sin and 
crying out in anguish, "Who shall deliver me?" 
So long as we are here in the flesh we can do no 
better than mingle our bitter cry of actual daily 
defeat with our paean of triumph over a victory 
achieved in our human nature by one, whom it 



JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 237 

is ours to follow only with our fullest approval, 
our earnest and abiding faith in his saving merits 
and our agonized desires ; while our love towards 
God and our fellows must always remain cold and 
our wills in a constant state of partial paralysis ! 

All this is simply the old priestly and heathen- 
ish denial of the genuine Christian doctrine of 
salvation by God's loving kindness through faith. 
To justify may mean to pronounce righteous, but 
in the New Testament it never means to pro- 
nounce righteous apart from making the individ- 
ual so declared righteous in himself to the pre- 
cise length and breadth and depth and height 
that he is pronounced such. God cannot be 
mocked by men, and he does not mock himself. 
He never calls a sinner a saint. Nor does he 
count any saint more saintly than he actually is. 
God cultivates reality. 

It is by bringing men into his will — into as 
complete a conformity to his will as they feel called 
to — that God relieves and gladdens their con- 
sciences. Apart from this there is no true peace 
of mind, though there may be a false sense of 
security. The New Testament is full of this 
teaching. It is not always clearly set forth, but 
the moment Paul, for instance, feels that he has 
placed this truth in any peril, he hastens to re- 
pair his fault. He says — 

"Do we, then, use this faith to abolish Law? 
Heaven forbid ! No, we establish law." 



238 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

"What are we to say, then? Are we to con- 
tinue in sin, in order that God's lovingldndness 
may be multiplied? Heaven forbid! We be- 
came dead to sin, and how can we go on living in 
it?" (Rom. 3:31; 6:1, 2.) Beside this I may 
place a word of John: — 

"You know that Christ appeared to take away 
our sins ; and in him sin has no place. No one 
who maintains union with him lives in sin; no one 
who lives in sin has ever really seen him or learnt 
to know him. My children, do not let any one 
mislead you. He who lives righteously is right- 
eous — as Christ is righteous. He who lives sin- 
fully belongs to the Devil, for the Devil has sinned 
from the first. It was for this that the Son of 
God appeared, that he might undo the Devil's 
work. No one who has received the New Life 
from God lives sinfully, because the very nature 
of God dwells within him ; and he cannot live in 
sin, because he has received the new Life from 
God." (I Jno. 3:5-9.) How positive and unmis- 
takable all this is. And John goes further yet. 
He declares that God saves into holiness of dis- 
position as well as into that holiness of the will 
which is continually represented by right words 
and deeds. He saves from hatred into love, and 
he who has not been rescued from hating his fel- 
low-men, and introduced to the experience of lov- 
ing them (enemies and all) instead, has not re- 
ceived the New Life from God at all, but is a child 
of the Devil still. 



JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 239 

He who lives righteously in disposition as well 
as in desire, in volition, and in word and deed, is 
a child of God; and to live thus he must be made 
a child of God through the impartation by God, 
and the reception by himself, of the new Life from 
God, and so have the very nature of God dwell- 
ing within him. There is no salvation through 
imputed righteousness here. The saved sinner 
does not wear a Christly robe which only God can 
see, but one which all the world must recognize 
as Christly. "He who lives righteously is right- 
eous — as Christ is righteous." And the very na- 
ture of God coming to dwell within him, his dis- 
positions also are made Christly, so that he loves 
as Christ loves. 

To enter into a salvation like this is to find 
peace of conscience indeed. Where sins no longer 
exist there can be no distressing consciousness 
of their existence. Where the will of God is fully 
entered into and done instead, there must at once 
be realized a sense of self-approval, which, joined 
to the divine approval, cannot but give birth to 
the joy unspeakable to which some apostolic pens 
testify. It was this peace, this joy, that the writer 
of the "Hebrews" referred to in these words — 

"Once purified" and "Consciences clear from 
sins." He saw plainly that because Jesus brought 
all this about in every sinner, who took him as 
his Savior from sinning, "there is no further need 
of an offering for sin." (Heb. 10:2-18.) Actual 
deliverance from conscious sinning is the problem 



240 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

which God has worked out through Jesus for us 
men under our very eyes. Just one more word 
from Paul to show how clearly he perceived this — 

"But now that you have been set free from the 
control of Sin, and have become servants to God, 
the fruit that you reap is an ever-increasing holi- 
ness, and the end Immortal Life." (Rom. 6:22.) 
How could the man who wrote this have failed to 
write also — "Indeed, our main ground for satis- 
faction is this — our conscience tells us that our 
conduct in the world, and still more in our rela- 
tions with you, was marked by a purity of motive 
and a sincerity that were inspired by God, and 
was based, not on worldly policy, but on the help 
of God." (2 Cor. 1 :12.) There is neither mock 
modesty nor unworthy silence here. He was 
neither afraid nor ashamed to say: 

"It is through the love of God that I am what 
I am, and the love that he showed me has not been 
wasted." (I Cor. 15:10.) Years later this same 
man "fixed his eyes upon the Council and began — 

" 'Brothers, for my part, I have always ordered 
my life before God, with a clear conscience, up to 
this very day.' " (Acts 23:1.) There is no evi- 
dence whatever that Paul's conscience ever con- 
victed him of one act of unfaithfulness towards 
his Master from the day that he was first brought 
to acknowledge him as such, to the moment in 
which he sealed his testimony with his blood. 
Once, as he tells us, a certain physical ailment 
made his work so hard that — 



JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 241 

"I three times entreated the Lord, praying that 
it might leave me. But his reply has been — 'My 
help is enough for you; for my strength attains 
its perfection in the midst of weakness.' Most 
gladly, then, will I boast all the more of my weak- 
ness, so that the strength of the Christ may over- 
shadow me. That is why I delight in weakness, 
ill-treatment, hardships, persecution and difficul- 
ties, when borne for Christ. For when I am weak, 
then it is that I am strong." (II Cor. 12:8-10.) 

This is the sense of personal righteousness to 
which Jesus introduced men after his life upon 
earth had ceased. He made their past seem un- 
worthy and evil to them, only to give them such 
characters and careers as would fill their souls 
with holy satisfaction, and that before God. He 
took away the painful sense of sin so thoroughly 
that in some cases at least it seems to have caused 
distress only in connection with occasional recol- 
lections of that past, which, through his loving- 
kindness they had so thoroughly renounced. What 
is he represented as having done in this direction 
in the days of his flesh ? 

He is represented as having done the same then 
as later. The case of Zacchaeus and of "the 
woman who was an outcast in the town" prove this. 
There is nothing in either of these stories about 
the sense of sin which Jesus awakened. That this 
sense was awakened who can doubt who has read 
also the accounts of Peter's denial and Judas's 
betrayal of Jesus? Yet it receives not one word 



242 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

of mention. Why? Because that was not the 
thing which Jesus emphasized in his dealings with 
sinful men and women. Jesus was a positive and 
not a negative reformer — a positive and not a 
negative Savior. He swallowed up all the nega- 
tives! of the Decalogue in his three positives. 
"What is the first of all the commandments?" 
"The first," answered Jesus, "is — 'Hear, O 
Israel; the Lord our God is the one Lord; and 
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
strength.' The second is this — 'Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thou dost love thyself.' " (Mark 
12:28-31.) Jesus emptied human hearts and 
lives of their sins by filling them with his most 
passionate striving after the highest righteous- 
ness. He built upon DO, not upon DO NOT, 
and set men's faces towards the light of the glow- 
ing future, instead of towards the darkness of 
the days they had misspent. So his Zacchaeus's 
words were not those of direct confession at all, 
but of such a hearty and sturdy profession as 
led Jesus to declare before all the cavillers — 

"Salvation has come to this house to-day, for 
even this man is a son of Abraham." (Luke 19 : 
9.) With the woman at his feet in the house of 
Simon the Pharisee it was the same. "Simon, I 
have something to say to you." "Pray do so, 
Teacher," Simon answered; and Jesus began: 
"There were two people who were in debt to a 
money-lender ; one owed fifty pounds, and the 



JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 243 

other five. As they were unable to pay, he for- 
gave them both. Which of them, do you think, 
will love him the more?" "I suppose," answered 
Simon, "it will be the man to whom he forgave 
the greater debt." "You are right," said Jesus, 
and then, turning to the woman, he said to Si- 
mon — "Do you see this woman? I came into your 
house — you gave me no water for my feet, but she 
has made my feet wet with tears and dried them 
with her hair. You did not give me one kiss, but 
she, from the moment I came in, has not ceased 
to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head even 
with oil, but she has anointed my head with per- 
fume. And for this, I tell you, her sins, many as 
they are, have been pardoned, because she has 
loved greatly; but one who has little pardoned 
him, loves but little." 

This was Jesus's way. He transmuted the 
deepest sense of sin into the most passionate 
spirit of holy service. He could not have done 
otherwise and been the Savior he was. The nurs- 
ing of regrets is worse than idle and remorse is 
suicidal. It was along this path that Judas 
moved bearing the cord which proved as treacher- 
ous towards him as he had towards his Master ; 
and Jesus flew from his grave to save Peter from 
it. It is only as our regrets lose themselves in 
our love for God in Christ that we become posi- 
tively holy and greatly useful. Therefore this 
is the one way of salvation to which Jesus intro- 
duces us. A most essential portion of Paul's 



244 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

motto was — "Forgetting what lies behind." 
Only as he continually succeeded in doing 
this did he find himself "straining every nerve for 
that which lies in front." (Phil. 3:13.) Regret 
gnaws away the energies and paralyzes aspira- 
tion, while grateful love catches visions of the high- 
est possibilities, and harnesses every power for 
victorious achievement. 

May we not listen to Jesus while he tells us how 
the Father deals with his sinful children? He is 
relating the story of the Two Sons and has reached 
the place where the lost young man, returning 
from his deep want and shame, and dragging him- 
self painfully along in his raggedness, is met by 
his Father, who "saw him while he was still a long 
way off, was deeply moved, and ran and threw his 
arms round his neck and kissed him." The 
wretched prodigal wails out — 

"I sinned against Heaven and against you; I 
am no longer fit to be called your son; make me 
one of your hired servants." But the father is 
so deaf to all this that he does not appear to have 
heard one word. What he has heard is his son's 
spirit of contrition, and his utter readiness and 
longing desire to do his whole will, even in the 
lowest place. So instead of taking him at his 
word, "the father turned to his servants and 
said 'Re quick and fetch a robe — the very best — 
and put it on him ; give him a ring for his finger 
and sandals for his feet ; and bring the fatted calf 
and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for 



JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 245 

here is my son who was dead, and is alive again, 
was lost, and is found.' " 

We must make him forget, we must make him 
forget ; his bad past must be crowded out of his 
active memory even, by means of the high place 
and the holy joys we shall make his ! This has 
always been the father's spirit towards his chil- 
dren who return to him from their wanderings. 
The Priest's provision is the humbling, painful or 
costly penance, the Pharisee's the place of the 
outcast who must never be permitted to forget, 
while that of the Father is all that belongs to son- 
ship in that holy mansion, which is our own 
Father's house. Jesus strengthened to the utmost 
the spirit of self-reverence, and the conscience 
which does not accuse. 



XV 
JESUS THE BEARER AWAY OF SIN 

The bearer away must first become the bearer. 
No load can be carried to a distance until it has 
first been laid upon the shoulders which are to 
be burdened by it for the time. This fact is most 
distinctly set forth in one of the symbols of Mo- 
saism. 

There was! each year a supreme day of atone- 
ment for the Israelitish people. Of the animals 
figuring in connection with the bloody and un- 
bloody rites of this day were two goats. Between 
these there was no difference either in perfection 
or worth, when they were taken by the Priest 
and set before Jehovah at the door of the tent 
of meeting to be chosen by lot, one for Jehovah, 
the other for Azazel. As soon as the lot was cast, 
the one that fell to Jehovah was slaughtered, and, 
as it poured out its life, its blood was caught in 
a basin and in this basin borne by the high priest 
through the curtain into the Holiest Place, where 
it was sprinkled by him seven times upon and be- 
fore the Mercy Seat. Borne out again it was at 
length mixed with the blood of the bullock, which 
seems to have been slain before it, and used in 
further acts of purification upon the places and 

246 



JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 247 

furniture provided for the priestly and popular 
worship. This done the high priest proceeded 
according 1 to these specifications — 

"He shall lay both his hands upon the head 
of the live goat, and confess over him all the ini- 
quities of the children of Israel, and all their trans- 
gressions, even all their sins ; and he shall put 
them upon the head of the goat, and shall send 
him away by the hand of a man that is in readi- 
ness into the wilderness : and the goat shall bear 
upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land : 
and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness." 

Thus the goat for Azazel — the scape-goat — ■ 
became first the bearer of all Israel's sins, and aft- 
erwards, under superior guidance and control, the 
bearer away of these sins. 

Let us be very specific here. These goats were 
the means of getting Jesus placed before us first 
as the bearer of our sins, and then as the bearer 
away of our sins. The writers of the New Testa- 
ment were Israelites and thought and wrote as 
such. They could never get away from the re- 
ligious imagery of their race. Now we shall see 
as we proceed that, in their estimation, Jesus 
took the place of both goats, as well as of all the 
other victims and sin-bearers of the Mosaic ritual. 
He took the place of the first goat as well as of 
the second, the place of the second, as well as of 
the first. 

Fixing our attention now upon the goat for 
Azazel — the scape-goat — let us note how he be- 



248 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

comes the bearer of sins. He becomes such 
through their confession. He is neither killed nor 
wounded. No violence whatever is visited upon 
him. He is not looked upon with dislike but with 
favor. He is not regarded with hatred but with 
affection. The people gather about him and with 
one voice, through the lips of the High Priest, 
they say, and rejoice as they say it — This is our 
goat, our goat for Azazel, our scape-goat, our 
goat that is here for the express purpose of bear- 
ing and then bearing away our sins. For this 
goat bless we Jehovah! Here by confessing our 
sins we renounce them and part with them forever. 
Henceforth may they never burden us more ! And 
they cannot afflict him, for our goat cannot sink 
under human sins, though he can bear them away, 
representing as he does, the salvation of our holy 
God, as he causes the words of our mouths and the 
meditations of our hearts to flow forth in purity 
and truth before him, our minds to meditate night 
and day upon his law and our whole lives to image 
forth his will. 

The typical priest of Mosaism, of course, never 
rose to this height. He was earthly, sensual, dev- 
ilish. He could not see the truth in his own sys- 
tem. He could not believe in the possible things — 
the actual blessed deliverance of men from their 
sins themselves. He could only believe in the im- 
possible thing — namely, their deliverance from all 
the penalties of their sins. Where faith ceases 
credulity always begins. The man who cannot 



JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 249 

believe in the thing which is rational will always 
find a place in his creed for the thing which is 
irrational. The priest named the sins of Israel 
one after another, placing them with his own 
hands upon the head of the goat, and then 
through some mental legerdemain, gazed after it, 
as it was being led out of his sight by the "man in 
readiness," under the hazy impression that it 
was bearing away into the wilderness, not those 
sins at all, but their various penalties of broken 
health, intellectual weakness, and moral and spir- 
itual disability. Or, failing even here, he saw as 
sin's penalty only the vengeful wrath of an infinite 
Shylock, who, however, might be won to mercy 
through the plentiful shedding of blood not hu- 
man. 

But the prophet in Israel, to whatever tribe 
he might belong, saw the truth, and rejoiced in 
the liberty from sinning which it continually as- 
sured him. To this prophet we owe every uplift- 
ing thing which the Old Testament contains. To 
him the service of God always meant an escape 
from his sins themselves into the holy will of God 
— an escape and deliverance divinely prepared 
and divinely effected. The rites of his religion 
in general, and the rites of the day of atonement 
in particular, all spoke to him of this great sal- 
vation. Behind them all he saw God himself so 
distinctly, as the God and Rock of his salvation, 
that again and again he felt himself in no need 
of any further continuance, or use, of the ap- 



250 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

pointed rites. He met God in the synagogue as 
well as in the temple, and under the stars as well 
as in the synagogue, and cried — 

"Wfoom have I in heaven but thee? 
And there is none upon earth that I desire beside 

thee. 
My flesh, even my heart faileth; 
But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion 

forever." (Psalm 73:25-26.) 

Let us now look back. The goat for Azazel 
must forever stand associated with the goat for 
Jehovah. There is no confession of sin, and con- 
sequently, no "remission" or escape from sin it- 
self, contemplated in the Mosaic ritual apart from 
the shedding of blood. This is because that ritual 
contemplated sin to the utmost, as well as salva- 
tion to the utmost. The two things absolutely 
must stand together. Salvation to the uttermost 
implies sin to the uttermost, and sin to the utter- 
most demands salvation to the uttermost. And 
sin is to the uttermost when it slays the perfect 
being, because it declares that, being perfect, he 
should be slain. Here sin represents the perver- 
sion of all right thinking, shows us conscience, in 
the time if its supreme test, saying in the most 
absolute way I ought, when the only proper word 
for it is an absolute I ought not ; the will deciding 
to take life at the point where most of all it should 
decide to preserve it; and the whole man throw- 
ing himself! into an act of murder in the very case 



JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 251 

in which he should be giving all his powers to the 
work of approving, exalting and glorifying the 
being whom he makes his victim. And the pic- 
ture drawn by Mosaism is blacker yet. Intellect, 
conscience, will, the whole man, must do all this 
in the name of God, and through God's chief 
priest. It was the high priest himself who slew 
the perfect being, Jehovah's chosen one, the goat 
for Jehovah; and he slew it as the people's repre- 
sentative. Their vote went that way. Through 
him they all slew it. The prophet had the true 
vision when at last he saw and said that each 
bloody offering testified to a murder, besides other 
outrages. (Isa. 66:3.) 

First, then, under Mosaism we see an innocent 
and perfect representative of its kind slaughtered 
on this one definite ground, among others, that it 
was perfect. It was on account of its perfection 
that it was singled out and made a victim. Then, 
as if this victim had come to life again, we see 
the very men who slew it gathered about a being 
just like it, confessing their sins upon its head 
through the lips of the same high priest through 
whose hands they had done their deed of slaugh- 
ter, and then, with him, gazing upon it as it bears 
their sins away from them into the wilderness, 
which they propose never to visit to resume them. 
And all this we say represents Jesus as the bearer 
and bearer-away of sin. 

In this study of Jesus, then, we must first look 
upon him as the bearer of sin. He is the bearer 



252 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

of sin first as the perfect man who, because of his 
perfect goodness, was murdered, and then as the 
perfect man in whose presence sinful men stand 
convicted of their sins, confessing and renouncing 
them. The lot fell to him first for Jehovah and 
then for Azazel. The goats were two and he is 
one and the same Jesus. They were two because 
the first could not be made to live again after be- 
ing slaughtered. Jesus is one because it is his 
to say — 

"I died, and I am alive forever and ever." 
(Rev. 1:18.) Jesus on the cross as the bearer of 
sin was a familiar thought to the primitive Jewish 
Christian mind. Peter gave it expression when 
he wrote — "He himself carried our sins in his 
own body to the cross." (I Pet. 2:24.) This 
bearing of human sins by Jesus was not mysti- 
cal but actual. A considerable list of these sins 
can easily be made out. All sins came upon him 
there in their root principle of selfishness. Jesus 
had told his persecutors early that the self-seek- 
ing spirit could not but prevent their acceptance 
of him, and that this self-seeking was a genuine 
renunciation of God himself. (Jno. 5:44.) This 
self-seeking led these persecutors to the place 
where "Pilate knew that it was out of jealousy 
(or envy) that they had given Jesus up to him." 
(Matt. 27:18.) In the Upper Room Jesus 
said — 

"They have both seen and hated both me and 
my Father. And so is fulfilled what is said in 



JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 253 

their law — 'They hated me without a cause.' " 
(Jno. 15:24, 25.) At an earlier date he sternly 
rebuked these men in such words as these — 

"You are children of your father the Devil, 
and you are determined to do what your father 
loves to do. He was a murderer from the first 
. . . He is a liar and the father of lying." 
(Jno. 8:44.) He who reads the story of the trial 
of Jesus in the light of such statements as these 
will see that Jesus bore to his cross besides sel- 
fishness — that fruitful mother of all human sins — 
envy, jealousy, hatred, malice, blasphemy, coward- 
ice, lying, perjury, subornation of perjury, and 
wanton cruelty and murder. He went to his 
cross, bore it, and had it bear him, as the per- 
fectly innocent victim of all these forms of human 
sin. He bore them in his body, which they slew, 
sin proving mightier than his physical frame and 
that which constituted it a living organism. Sin 
as death crushed out his physical life. 

Thus he bore our sins. But he did not in this 
act bear them away. On the cross Jesus endured 
our sins. Neither Judas who betrayed him, nor 
Peter who denied him with oaths and imprecations, 
nor Pilate who in his cowardice gave him up to 
death, when he should have stood by his own ver- 
dict of acquittal, nor the crowd which voted for 
his crucifixion, nor the hierarchy which had at 
last consummated its murderous purpose, was 
freed from one of his sins or from an atom of his 
guilt, through the shedding of his blood. Only 



254 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the perverted priestly mind can believe such 
topsy-turvy teaching. But one moment of serious 
reflection was needed by any one of the whole un- 
worthy lot to convince him that his sin and guilt 
alike were carried to their climax in the moment 
when their victim, having cried out, "It is fin- 
ished," breathed out his life to God in the words 
— "Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit." 
(Luke 23:46.) It was because the conscience of 
Judas was true at last, that, in view of this mo- 
ment and all it meant for him, he rushed to the 
chief priest in a frenzied act of confession and 
restitution, and then in the blackness of despair 
went "to his proper place." How much would it 
have comforted him to know that his victim loved 
him still and was even then praying for his mur- 
derers? Is murder rendered no murder at all be- 
cause a Jesus, or a Stephen after him, is god-like 
enough to die wishing for his slayers the mercy, 
instead of the vengeance, of Heaven ? Nay. The 
vision of such innocent and surpassing love inten- 
sifies their sense of guilt. How Peter must have 
suffered under his crushing consciousness of ill- 
desert, in view of the part he played during the 
fatal trial, until Jesus met him in mercy after his 
resurrection ! It was this sense of his own guilt 
which so distinctly fitted him to charge home to 
them the more awful guilt of others in such words 
as these — 

"Jesus of Nazareth, a man whose mission from 
God to you was proved by miracles, wonders and 



JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 255 

signs, which God showed among you through him, 
as you know full well . . . you by the hands 
of lawless men, nailed to a cross and put to death. 
But God released him from the pangs of death 
and raised him to life, it being impossible for 
death to retain its hold upon him. ... So 
let the whole nation of Israel know beyond all 
doubt, that God has made him both Lord and 
Christ — this very Jesus whom }^ou crucified." 

Were the people comforted when they heard 
this? Did they reason to the swift conclusion 
that the resurrection at least had made all things 
right for them, because it proved that they had 
simply been playing into the hands of God and 
helping him towards his triumph over human 
wickedness in general? Far as their intellectual 
perversion had gone, it had not gone as far as 
that. God's triumph thoroughly alarmed them, 
as well it might. "They were conscience smitten 
and said to Peter and to the rest of the apos- 
tles— 

"Brothers j what can we do?" 

"Repent," answered Peter. (Act 2:22.) 

Now to get this whole matter before us from 
the view-point of the Mosaic Day of Atonement, it 
is necessary for me to proceed to another word 
of Peter. Addressing numbers of these same per- 
sons again shortly after the day of Pentecost it- 
self, Peter urged home these facts — 

"You, I say, disowned the Holy and Righteous 



256 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

One, and asked for the release of a murderer! 
The very Guide to Life you put to death! But 
God raised him from the dead. . . . There- 
fore repent and turn, that your sins may be 
wiped away. . . . 'And it shall be that 
should any one among the people not listen 
to that Prophet he shall be utterly de- 
stroyed.' . . . For you, first, God raised 
up his servant, and sent him to bless you, by 
turning each one of you from his wicked ways." 
(Acts 3:14, 15, 19, 26.) The gist of all this 
is that the great purpose of God in sending his 
Son into the world was to lead Israel into blessed- 
ness by leading them out of their sins, but they 
had utterly rejected this purpose of God and had 
through their High Priest "put to death" "the 
very Guide to Life." Just as through that same 
high priest they had from year to year on their 
Day of Atonement slain Jehovah's goat they had 
now through him murdered Jehovah's "Servant," 
"his Holy and Righteous One." But God had 
not abandoned his purpose to save them. On 
the contrary he had raised Jesus up again by 
bringing him back from the dead, and now he 
was offered to them afresh as their bearer and 
bearer-away of sins. In direct view of his liv- 
ing perfections, his holiness and righteousness, it 
was theirs to look upon their own sins and 
recognize their utter badness, theirs to repent of 
them all, confessing and renouncing them, 
and seeing them borne away through the di- 



JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 257 

vine forgiveness as, in symbol, they had been 
borne away from year to year by the goat for 
Azazel. 

Some distinctions must be made here. From 
the standpoint of man's part in it the death of 
Jesus was the worst and most indefensible of all 
murders. And there is really no other stand- 
point from which to view it. Jesus himself had 
no part in it except to endure it, under tremen- 
dous protest, as I have elsewhere pointed out. 
His Father strengthened him for and during the 
ordeal, by keeping his heart unalterably set upon 
that testimony for the truth which it was his to 
utter and to live. It was a deed of unutterable 
wickedness, which God in his respect for the 
human freedom established by himself, could not 
avert. Every effort of Jesus himself to avert it 
was also an effort of his Father put forth through 
him. No other view whatever can be entertained 
without making our Father and his a partner be- 
forehand in the most shameful crime which has 
ever blackened the pages of human history. 
There is no contradiction to all this in the words 
of Jesus — "I lay down my life — to receive it 
again. No one took it from me, but I lay it down 
of myself." His was not the death of the suicide, 
but of the martyr. These words simply repre- 
sent that splendid sense of victory in defeat which 
arose in his mind in connection with his complete 
entrance into the will of his Father, and that 
vision of the final outcome of all with which his 



258 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Father cheered his heart. (Jno. 10:17, 18; Heb. 
12:2.) 

The death of Jesus, therefore, did not procure 
forgiveness for men. If anything could have 
made their forgiveness impossible, any one but 
Jesus himself would have said it was that. As 
it was, his first prayer on the cross, uttered, prob- 
ably, while one of the nails was plowing its 
way through his flesh and bones into the wood, 
was — "Father, forgive them ; they do not know 
what they are doing." Doubt has been thrown 
upon the authenticity of this prayer, but it is 
certainly in full harmony with all the facts of 
the occasion, as well as with the spirit of Jesus 
himself. 

What, then, in the mercy of God has the death 
of Jesus, joined with the fact of his resurrection, 
accomplished for our race? This. It has done 
more than all the wickedness of men besides to 
drive home to their consciences the fact that they 
are sinners in need of the salvation of God. It 
did this at Pentecost, has done it ever since, is 
doing it now, and will continue to do it, until the 
last sin of all has stood indefensible in its pres- 
ence. This also it has done, or men might have 
committed suicide one after another like Judas — 
it has revealed that love of God which endures all 
things that it may forgive all things, and bears 
with all sorts of sin, that it may save us from 
them all. It not only brings to conviction of 
sin; it brings also to repentance, that is to say, 



JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 259 

to the confession and abandonment of sin, and to 
such a trust in the mercy and love of God as in- 
spires to the largest possible acquisition of his 
whole mind and character. In short, the sending 
of Jesus into the world by his father and ours to 
endure the death of the cross, so commends his 
love to us that our love of sin breaks down before 
the vision, and we accept and embrace his right- 
eousness in its stead, to find it transforming us 
and building itself into our whole character and 
life. We know that those who slew him ought to 
have accepted his guidance out of their sins into 
the righteousness of the Kingdom of God at once, 
and without reddening their hands with his blood. 
We know ourselves to be of the same race and 
character as they. We call their crime our own, 
and, fleeing from our guilt of the cross, we 
"draw near boldly to the Throne of Love" to 
find there, "the pity and love" we need. (Heb. 
4:16.) 

Finally, it is not the Jesus who died that is 
the Savior of our race. He offered himself to 
his people to be their Savior and through them, 
the Savior of all men besides. But they re- 
jected and crucified him. It is not Jesus in our 
mortal flesh who is our Savior. Paul took in this 
fact and wrote — "If we have known Christ as a 
man in the flesh, yet now we do so no longer." 
(2 Cor. 5:16.) The Jesus who is our Savior is 
he who was raised from the dead and placed by 
his God and Father "above all Angels and Arch- 



260 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

angels of every rank and above every name that 
can be named." (Eph. 1:20, 21.) Yet both 
are one. "He who went down is the same as he 
who went up — up beyond the highest heaven, that 
he might fill all things with his presence. And 
he it is who gave to the Church Apostles, 
prophets, missionaries, pastors and teachers." 
(Eph, 4:10, 11.) 

"To him who loves us and freed us from our 
sins by his own blood in his utmost love — and he 
made us 'a Kingdom of Priests in the service of 
God,' his Father! — to him be ascribed glory and 
dominion forever. Amen." (Rev. 1:5, 6.) 



XVI 

JESUS THE MEDIATOR AND 
INTERCESSOR 

The mediator is the middleman in any trans- 
action where the principals concerned do not find 
it convenient or possible to meet each other in 
person. There are various middlemen, bearing a 
variety of names and discharging a variety of 
functions in trade and commerce. Barristers and 
attorneys are the middlemen of the courts of law, 
where the principals in each case stand in the 
background under the name of clients. The mid- 
dlemen of sovereigns and sovereign states go un- 
der such titles as plenipotentiaries and ambassa- 
dors. These are servants who have been given 
full authority to act on behalf of their sovereign 
masters. 

A second sort of mediator or middleman is the 
arbiter or umpire, who is chosen jointly by both 
the parties in a given dispute, contest or com- 
petition, to say what is fair and equal between 
them in the case. He may have much work in 
bringing his principals to see and conform to 
the requirements of righteousness, particularly 
where their difference has become a quarrel, and 

261 



262 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

a dogged obstinacy has been developed on one 
side or both, 

The office of the intercessor is quite closely 
akin to that of the ambassador and arbiter s and 
its functions are very often involved in the work 
of these. The intercessor pleads with one per- 
son or power on behalf of another. If he is in 
the place of an arbiter he may be compelled to 
plead with each of his clients to give due con- 
sideration to the other's claims, and to assume 
the place and attitude required both by the facts 
of the case and the entirely friendly agreement 
and relationship which they have in contempla- 
tion. 

Either ambassador or arbiter may easily find 
himself in personal peril solely on account of his 
faithful discharge of the duties of his position. 
The more he pleads for the rights of the case 
which he is representing, the more offensive will 
he make himself to the party who is determined 
to have his own way, right or wrong. If he per- 
sists in doing his whole duty, he may even lose 
his life, in spite of the fact that his person is very 
properly considered inviolable. 

According to New Testament thought Jesus 
holds both offices. He is a mediator, and he is an 
intercessor. He is God's Servant. Then he is 
the Servant who was sent to men with God's mes- 
sage. He is also represented as clothed with 
sovereign powers, and as being in some sense 
the vicegerent, as well as the ambassador, of 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 

Heaven. This is quite natural, for the ambassa- 
dor is always a vicegerent to the full extent of 
the work which it is his to do on behalf of his 
country or his sovereign. These writers tell us, 
too, that he pleads, as well as demands, seeking 
to move by persuasion and by personal influence, 
as well as by that awe which infinite authority is 
calculated to inspire. 

So he speaks for God to men. He is also rep- 
resented as speaking for men to God. He is, 
therefore, doubly an intercessor, and seems at 
times rather an arbiter than an ambassador pure 
and simple. He is as much devoted to the wel- 
fare of men as to the unfolding purpose of God. 

In his illustrations of the Kingdom of Heaven 
Jesus represents that Kingdom as "a treasure 
hidden in a field, which a man found and hid 
again, and then, in his delight, went and sold 
all that he had and bought that field ; and again 
as a merchant in search of choice pearls, who, 
finding one of great value, went and sold every- 
thing that he had, and bought it." (Matt. 13: 
4*4-46.) From the viewpoint of these he set 
forth "the Kingdom" as capable of becoming the 
personal possession of "a merchant" or "a man." 
If this "merchant" and "man" do not stand 
for Jesus himself, which is doubtful, then 
they represent that whole class of seekers 
after the highest and best, who, through all the 
centuries from the first, have seen in what Jesus 
bore with him from Heaven to earth, the richest 



264 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

treasures of their kind ever brought within 
human reach. This interpretation harmonizes 
well with such words of Paul as — "God's hidden 
Truth, even Christ himself, in whom all treasures 
of wisdom and knowledge lie hidden. . . . 
For in Christ the Godhead in all its fullness dwells 
incarnate, and by your union with him, you also 
are filled with it." (Col. 2:2, 9.) 

When Jesus wished to specify or particularize 
at this point he emphasized two things — truth 
and life. Before Pilate at the last he was the 
King of the truth, with everyone who was on the 
side of truth listening to his voice. (Jno. 18: 
37.) Those who were constant to his message 
found out the truth, and the truth made them 
free. (Jno. 8:32.) "His sheep listened to his 
voice, he knew them, and they followed him; and 
he gave them Immortal Life." (Jno. 10:27, 28.) 
It was thus that he spoke of those whom he at- 
tracted and inspired. But there was another 
class which he addressed in terms of rebuke and 
denunciation — "You refuse to come to me to have 
Life." (Jno. 5:40.) "It is because I speak the 
truth to you that you do not believe me. You 
are children of your Father, the Devil, and you 
are determined to do what your father loves to 
do. He was a murderer from the first, and did 
not stand by the truth, because there was no 
truth in him." (Jno. 10:44, 45.) 

Coming forth from the Father he bore his 
message in his own person as well as upon his 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 265 

lips. The demands of this message were peremp- 
tory. The truth and the life were the riches of 
a divinely created manhood, which was produced 
in every one who entered into union with him by 
yielding himself up to the will of God as he did. 
Entering thus into God's will was entering the 
Kingdom of God, to be made the possessor of all 
its blessings — all its Truth and all its Life, as 
these were progressively revealed. To refuse to 
come into union with him thus was to commit the 
gravest possible offense against God. It was to 
turn one's back upon both his authority and the 
richest benefits he could offer. It was to deny 
one's self an infinite good, and at the same time 
to deny the infinite love the pleasure and honor 
of bestowing that good. 

Jesus saw this so clearly that he could not con- 
ceal his disturbance of mind in view of it. He 
was deeply pained by the dishonor that was thus 
put upon both his Father and himself, and the 
peril and loss of those who involved themselves 
in this guilt. Here lay the sin against the Holy 
Spirit. It was a rejection of the good and the 
Holy in the fullest possible recognition of their 
infinite value in themselves. 

Jesus made a clear distinction between this 
and the rejection of himself personally. That he 
declared could be forgiven. He could be misun- 
derstood, and so far as men refused him their 
confidence and support because they did not know 
him for what he really was, they did it innocently. 



266 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

But no man could consciously turn his back upon 
the true and the holy, and at the same time be- 
lieve himself to be in the service of God. Know- 
ing that he had definitely chosen falsehood in- 
stead of truth, he could not but know also that 
he had chosen death in place of life. To do this 
was to reject God in himself or directly, and not 
simply to reject him as he could be, and was, 
revealed in a human life. 

Jesus was God's ambassador. But because the 
credentials he bore had to be translated into terms 
of our humanity, they could be sincerely doubted. 
But truth and holiness, wherever they stood 
clearly revealed before the eyes of any man, and 
whatever the thing or person in whom they in- 
hered might be, presented an authority which was 
wholly divine, and were rejected, therefore, at 
the absolute peril of the soul. (Matt. 12:32.) 
It was on this account that Jesus said at the 
last — 

"They have no excuse for their sin. . . . 
They have both seen and hated both me and my 
Father. They hated me without cause" and as 
"the Way and the Truth and the Life." (Jno. 
15:22, 24, 25; 14:6.) They have rejected the 
truth which I have brought to them, knowing it 
to be the truth of God and they simply would not 
have the Life I offered them, because it could be 
made theirs only through their acceptance of the 
Truth itself, which I announced in their hearing 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 267 

and lived before their eyes. Their rejection of 
my Father is as complete as their rejection of 
myself. 

Paul saw himself joined to Christ as an am- 
bassador and perceived the double effect of his 
work in that capacity. As it had been with 
Jesus so was it with him. He was wholly de- 
voted to God's will in the premises, and he yearned 
over the sinful men to whom he had been sent. 
He wished them saved from their rebellion and all 
its terrible consequences, but only on God's terms. 
He had no dream that these could or should be 
changed. It was his to present the Truth and 
along with it the Life. So was it also with every 
other apostle and evangelist whom God had as- 
sociated with him in the work. The choice of 
accepting or rejecting the things they offered 
lay with those whom they addressed. And Paul 
saw that in many cases rejection was only too 
fatally easy and sure. So we find him joining 
his Master in quoting from Isaiah — 

"Go to this nation and say — 

'You will hear with your ears without ever under- 
standing, 

And, though you have eyes, you will see without 
ever perceiving.' 

For the mind of this nation is grown dense, 

And their ears are dull of hearing, 

Their eyes also have they closed; 

Lest some day they should see with their eyes, 

And with their ears they should hear, 



268 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

And in their mind they should understand and 
should turn — and I should heal them." 

(Matt. 13:14, 15; Acts 28:26-27.) 

We find him also voicing his vision, and his feel- 
ings thus : 

"We are the fragrance of Christ ascending to 
God — both among those who are in the path of 
Salvation and among those who are in the path 
to Ruin. To the latter we are an odor which 
arises from death and tells of Death; to the 
former an odor which arises from life and tells 
of Life. But who is equal to such a task?" 
(II Cor. 2:15, 16.) 

It is to Paul that we owe the clearest possible 
statement of the way in which the office of in- 
tercessor found itself linked with the work of the 
ambassador or mediator, in his own case. After 
showing how the mediatorship of Jesus had al- 
ready established itself as a transforming and 
re-creating agency among men, and declaring of 
every one who had thus been brought into union 
with Christ, that "he is a new creation — a new 
being" — he continues — 

"But all this is the work of God who reconciled 
us to himself through Christ, and gave us the 
Ministry of Reconciliation. ... It is, then, 
on Christ's behalf that we are acting as am- 
bassadors, God, as it were, appealing to you 
through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf 
—Be reconciled to God." (II Cor. 5:17, 18, 20.) 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 269 

To intercede is to entreat one person or set of 
persons on behalf of another. Here "Christ" 
and "God" are the persons on behalf of whom the 
entreaties or intercessions are represented as 
being made; while the persons entreated, or inter- 
ceded with, are sinful men, the end aimed at being 
their reconciliation to God. It was God who was 
appealing and imploring, and he was doing this 
through men whom he had already reconciled to 
himself. To fit these men for this work, he had 
brought them through their union with Christ 
into such active participation with his saving de- 
sire and purpose, that they had definitely joined 
him in his love for their unsaved fellow-men, his 
yearnings over them and his efforts to reconcile 
them in both character and life to himself. Thus 
Paul and his co-workers found themselves in the 
place of "God's fellow-workers!" (1 Cor. 3:9.) 
They were God's ambassadors to men and God's 
intercessors among men. 

Here it can be seen very plainly that the office 
and work of the intercessor grows directly out of 
God's love for sinful men. Their sinfulness had 
made them blind so that they could not see, un- 
less their eyes were opened; deaf, so that they 
could not hear, unless their ears were unstopped; 
and callous of heart, so that they could not feel, 
unless their hearts were touched in some sovereign 
way. Then Jesus came as the great physician — ■ 
ambassador, to open blind eyes by means of a 
stupendous vision, to unstop deaf ears by a touch 



270 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

of the divine finger, and to melt human hearts by 
the oxy-hjdrogen flame of divine love. And Jesus 
the ambassador became also Jesus the intercessor, 
who pleaded for God with men, entreating them 
not to give further pain to God's heart by longer 
persistence in the sins which were burdening them 
more and more, and would bring upon them over- 
whelming disaster. "Come to me, all ye who toil 
and are burdened and I will give you rest !" 
(Matt. 11:28). My Father sent me to you be- 
cause he loves you, and he looks upon you as his 
straying sons and daughters and asks you home. 
And Paul, as I have already shown, looked upon 
himself and his fellow evangelists as associate am- 
bassadors and intercessors, who had been called 
upon to take the place upon the earth which Jesus 
had occupied while here in the flesh; so that they 
were doing their work "on Christ's behalf," as 
well as for God. 

Here, then, we have God, Jesus and the apostles 
and evangelists of the primitive Christian Church 
all set forth as pleading with men to become rec- 
onciled to God by embracing the life of obedience 
to truth to which he has always been inviting 
them. To this we may add two words. The first 
is this. These agencies are all still at work upon 
the unfinished task. And the second is that an- 
other name must be added, namely, that of the 
Holy Spirit, who Jesus declared would come to 
guide into all truth, on the one hand, and to 
"bring conviction to the world as to Sin, and as 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 271 

to Righteousness and as to Judgment" on the 
other. So the purely divine unites with divinely 
filled men in the work of interceding or pleading 
with men still unsaved to "be reconciled to God." 
Such is the work of intercession man-ward. Can 
we discover its nature God-ward, if, indeed, there 
is an intercession with God for men, as well an 
intercession with men for God. 

That there is an authorized intercession with 
God on the behalf of men is a clear teaching of 
the New Testament. Such intercessions find their 
roots in human love and the divine love alike. To 
love is to wish well, and to wish well is to ask 
all besides one's self to aid in making it well with 
the one who is loved. The more widely, therefore, 
love is diffused the more intercession will move out 
towards universality. This is the thought which 
Tennyson expressed when he wrote in his "Pass- 
ing of Arthur" — 

"For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend? 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by golden chains about the feet of God." 

And if God pleads with men why should not men 
plead with God? If God needs the co-operation 
of men and must find intercessors to secure it for 
him, why should we find it different on our side? 
Taking up now some New Testament passages 



272 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

on this subject I may begin with Paul's word to 
Timothy for the churches of which he had been 
given the oversight: 

" First of all, then, I urge that petitions, 
prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving should 
be offered for every one, especially for kings 
and all who are in high positions." (I Tim. 2: 
1, 2.) Quite naturally he coupled with this the 
assurance — 

"This will be good and acceptable in the eyes 
of God our Savior, whose will it is that every one 
should be saved, and attain to a full knowledge 
of the Truth." (1 Tim. 2:3.) The God who 
pleads with all men to be reconciled to him must 
surely wish to save them, and delight to be asked 
to do anything towards that end. 

Next I would call attention to Paul's own in- 
tercessions on behalf of the membership of the 
churches which he had established or was super- 
intending. He assured the Colossians that "from 
the very day" on 1 which Epaphras "told us of the 
love with which the Spirit has inspired you, we 
have never ceased praying for you, or asking that 
you may possess that deeper knowledge of the will 
of God, which comes through all spiritual wisdom 
and insight." (Col. 1:8, 9.) His intercession 
for his Ephesian fellow-believers were most deeply 
spiritual : 

"I kneel before the Father — from whom all 
'fatherhood' in heaven and on earth derives its 
name — and pray that, in proportion to the wealth 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 273 

of his glory, he will strengthen you with his 
power by breathing his Spirit into your inmost 
soul, so that the Christ, through your faith, may 
make his home within your hearts in love; and I 
pray that you, now firmly rooted and established, 
may, with all Christ's people, have the power to 
comprehend in all its width and length and height 
and depth and to understand — though it surpasses 
all understanding — the love of Christ ; and so be 
filled to the full with God himself." (Eph. 3: 
14-19.) 

There is here the strongest resemblance to 
those intercessions of Jesus in the Upper Room, 
with which John has made us acquainted: 

"I intercede for them. . . . Holy Father, 
keep them. ... I do not ask thee to take 
them out of the world but to keep them from 
Evil. . . . It is not only for them that I am 
interceding, but also for those who believe on me 
through their Message, that they all may be 
one — that as thou, Father, art in union with me 
and I with thee, so they also may be in union 
with us — and so the world may believe that thou 
hast sent me as thy Messenger." ( Jno. 17 :9. 
11, 15, 20, 21.) It should also be remembered 
here that Paul asked the prayers of his fellow- 
believers for himself, as did also the writer of the 
letter to the Hebrews. (I Thess. 5 :25 ; II Thess. 
3:1; Col. 4:3; Heb. 13:18.) The earliest of all 
the Christian writings which have reached us en- 
joins upon all believers mutual confession of sins 



274 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and mutual intercession. (Jas. 5:16.) And 
when Jesus was passing into his agony of sup- 
plication for himself in Gethsemane, did he not 
ask Peter and James and John to watch with 
him? And would not their praying for them- 
selves have been at least a half-voiced praying 
for him? Was not this what he meant when he 
asked Peter chidingly — "What ! could none of 
you watch with me for one hour?" (Matt. 26: 
40.) 

There are some other passages touching the 
mediatorship of Jesus himself to which I should 
call attention here. They represent it as a con- 
tinuous heavenly and earthly fact, and are to be 
found in I Timothy and Hebrews. 

"There is but one God, and one Mediator be- 
tween God and men — the man, Christ Jesus." 
(I Tim. 2:5.) It is well to note that here 
"Christ Jesus" is described, not as the Son of 
God, but as "the Man." We may be sure that 
this fact is not without significance. 

The passages in Hebrews set before us the 
thing which he mediates or brings from God to 
man. It is "the Covenant" (8:6), "a new Cove- 
nant." (9:15; 12:24.) Nor are we left in any 
doubt as to the nature of this covenant. "This 
is the Covenant that I will make with the People 
of Israel — 

"After those days, says the Lord 
'I will impress my laws on their minds 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 275 

And will inscribe them on their hearts ; 

And I will be their God 

And they shall be my people, etc.' " 

Now to mediate this Covenant as an actual life 
for men the Son of God necessarily "became a 
man like other men," and showedi once for all that 
our humanity can receive God's will in such a 
fashion as to be governed by it at least as far as 
it is known, and thus that the Sons of men may be 
made the Sons of God in deed and in truth. So 
the life which Jesus mediated was the life of the 
children of God. Paul and John went the full 
length of clearly stating this fact. 

" 'And I will be a father to you, 

And you shall be my sons and daughters/ 

Says the Lord, the Ruler of all." (2 Cor. 6:18.) 

"Dear friends, we are God's children now." (I 
Jno. 3:2.) It may be added here that it was his 
love for his human brothers and his complete obe- 
dience to his Father, or, in other words, his un- 
swerving faithfulness as ambassador and inter- 
cessor, with a view to the fullest possible communi- 
cation of this life, that Jesus gave over his body 
to the death of the cross. So it is truly set down 
by apostolic pens that he died "on the behalf of 
men" and "on account of their sins." For it was 
their sins which slew him, and only his faithful- 
ness unto death could have supplied them with the 
object lesson which they needed, or the vision of 
the Life in its full expression. It is this same 



276 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

human faithfulness and obedience unto death, 
which is represented by all that New Testament 
phraseology, which is used to set forth the cleans- 
ing and redeeming power of the "blood" of Jesus. 
It was a further vision of a similar kind which led 
him, who before had taken "charge of the clothes 
of those who were murdering Stephen," to write 
of personally "supplementing the afflictions en- 
dured by the Christ, for the sake of his Body, 
the Church"; and a later church father to de- 
clare that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed 
of the church." It is in this way that the bruis- 
ing of Jesus was our healing. It is in this way 
also that "Jesus Christ, the Righteous, is the 
atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours 
only, but for those of the whole world besides." 
(I Jno. 2:2.) Jesus overthrows sin by that di- 
vine force of persuasion which stands forever as- 
sociated with his unlimited devotion to both God 
and men. "If, when we were God's enemies, we 
were reconciled to him by the death of his Son, 
much more, now that we have become reconciled, 
shall we be saved by virtue of his Life." (Rom. 
5:10.) The end aimed at was not God's recon- 
ciliation to us, but our reconciliation to God; and 
when we come to the consideration of the means, 
we find that if the life of Jesus cannot now be 
rightly viewed apart from his death, it is still 
truer that his death cannot be properly thought 
of apart from his life. 

Approaching from this viewpoint the subject 



JESUS THE MEDIATOR 277 

of intercession, I may call attention to three pas- 
sages. The first is Romans 8:34: "He who died 
for us is Christ Jesus ! — or rather it was he who 
was raised from the dead, and who is now at God's 
right hand and is even pleading on our behalf" ; 
the second is Hebrews 7:25 — "That is why he is 
able to save perfectly those who come to God 
through him, living forever, as he does, to inter- 
cede on their behalf" ; while — "My children, I am 
writing to you to keep you from sinning; but if 
any one should sin, we have one who can plead 
for us with the Father — Jesus Christ, the Right- 
eous" (I Jno. 2:1) — is the third. The thing 
contemplated in each and all of these is complete 
salvation from a life of conscious sinning to one 
of unbroken obedience and devotion to God, even 
in the midst of the sorest trials and sufferings, 
which the malice of bad men can invent and ap- 
ply ; and the teaching is that the pleadings of the 
living Jesus are mightily helpful in this direction. 
When we ask for some more precise word as to 
how and why, we are met by such a one as this — 
"So, also, the Spirit supports us in our weakness. 
We do not know even how to pray as we should ; 
but the Spirit himself pleads for us in sighs that 
can find no utterance. Yet he who searches all 
our hearts knows what the Spirit's meaning is, 
because the pleadings of the Spirit for Christ's 
People are in accordance with his will." (Rom. 
8:26, 27.) Are we not here taught a doctrine 
which modern evolutionary philosophy has begun 



278 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the serious work of propounding? Deep calls to 
deep in God himself, while he labors towards self- 
realization in all portions of his vast creation. 
All other loves and yearnings are but local ex- 
pressions of those which in him are infinite and all 
pervading. The love and yearning of Jesus him- 
self are local and human, and derive their whole 
saving power from that infinite source which he 
named "The Living Father who sent me." ( Jno. 
6:44, 57.) 

The final word, therefore, is this. All media- 
tion and intercession, the aim of which is the in- 
crease and absolute ultimate triumph of right- 
eousness in every being and every relationship ex- 
isting in our vast universe, moves forth from God 
and back to God, as a portion of that long toil 
which he has made his in the interests at the same 
time of himself and of all besides. And every be- 
ing who is consciously taken up into the task may 
know that he is God's fellow-worker towards his 
own self-realization, the self-realization of his fel- 
low men, and, through these, towards the self- 
realization of God himself. 

"That God may be all in all" is the unceasing 
cry of all the ages, till "the enc( ? " 



XVII 

JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 

What a man thinks of his Bible from the view- 
point of ethical codes must largely depend upon 
the theory he holds as to the main purpose of God 
in; blessing the world with the book. If he believes 
that God's chief intention in the matter was to 
bestow upon humanity, once and for all, a com- 
plete set of rules for our guidance in ever}^ par- 
ticular of every relationship of our increasingly 
complex lives, he will consult the book continually 
with the expectation of finding within it the pre- 
cise directions he needs in connection with each 
step that he takes. If, on the other hand, he 
looks upon his Bible as the principal vehicle of 
that revelation of himself to men, as Creator, Up- 
holder, Moral Governor, and Savior, which God 
saw was absolutely essential to their highest de- 
velopment and well-being; and as containing only 
such moral precepts as from time to time repre- 
sented the growing needs of the people, through 
whose seers this revelation was given ; he will, 
consciously or unconsciously, do these two things 
in his own interests : First, he will study the 
book principally to learn all it can tell him about 
God, particularly as he stands revealed in the life 
279 



280 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and teaching of his Son, Jesus Christ. And sec- 
ondly, he will gather from the book all he can find 
there of a nature suitable for his guidance in the 
affairs of his twentieth-century life; and when he 
sees it failing him at some scores of points, he 
will look into the laws of his own church and 
country, in the full belief that the same God who 
guided the Israelite is guiding individuals and 
peoples still, by giving them new laws suitable to 
their various additional requirements. 

Few, if any, to-day actually hold any other 
position toward the Bible than the second of those 
which I have just described. The debates which 
have arisen over the question of the Bible and 
ethical codes have grown out of the fact that some 
men still think that they regard the first position 
I have set forth as the correct one, though they 
do not really so regard it at all. 

First of all, then, let me say that if we could 
find a man who really holds that the Bible con- 
tains this complete and perfect code, we should 
have in our presence an individual capable of be- 
lieving that all necessary original thinking on 
questions of moral conduct was done by a few 
members of one small family of mankind, before 
the end of the second century A.D. The Bible is 
a product of the Israelitish mind as divinely en- 
lightened. This process of divine illumination 
on the foregoing theory came to an end with the 
completion of the New Testament. This means 
that from that date to the end of human history 



JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 281 

there could exist no need for, and therefore no 
experience of, such divine illumination as was im- 
parted to and enjoyed by the seers of the Old 
and New Testaments. The question does not lie 
here between the illumination experienced by Je- 
sus and that enjoyed by the Church fromi the day 
of Pentecost onward, but between the illumina- 
tion bestowed upon the Church from Pentecost 
to the end of the apostolic period, and that ex- 
perienced by the same church from the end of the 
apostolic period to the close of the Christian era. 
For Jesus, according to John, distinctly informed 
him and his fellow apostles that he had not 
taught them everything, but that they would 
themselves enjoy illumination by the same Spirit 
that had made him the teacher they had found 
him to be. By that Spirit and not by himself, 
they would be guided into all they needed to know. 
Is there anyone who really believes that the 
church during this brief period actually faced and 
permanently settled every question with a moral 
aspect that would become a practical one before 
the end? 

When one speaks of questions with a moral as- 
pect he opens up a large field. The world of 
thought and action was once divided by Christian 
thinkers into two departments, which were desig- 
nated as sacred and secular. This is no longer 
done with any definiteness, for a certain divine il- 
lumination has made it clear that thought and 
action along the "secular" lines demand the guid- 



282 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ance of conscience and the approval of God, and 
must, therefore, be regarded as also distinctly 
"sacred." God is king of the whole life, or he is 
no king at all. 

In morals the personal equation is one of no 
small dimensions. It can be seen from the stand- 
point of the choice of one's life-work, and it is 
very obtrusive sometimes in connection with the 
questions of foods and recreations. It is gener- 
ally recognized, for instance, that some men must 
be preachers of the gospel, or lead a life of con- 
tinuous rebellion against God. It is also believed 
that some of these preachers must go to foreign 
lands with their message, or live under the same 
condemnation. It is held, too, that, considered 
as a class, each of these men knows for himself, 
apart from and often against the opinion and 
wish of his fellow-men, that he is "called" to this 
service. Carey is a leading example. But 
whence came Carey's call? From what ethical 
code? "Quench not the Spirit" would guide him 
after the call reached him. But no word of the 
New Testament laid upon William Carey mission- 
ary service as his life-work. God spoke to him 
directly, as truly as he did to the apostle Paul, or 
any ancient prophet. 

I shall not tarry over the fact that in matters 
of foods and recreations the duty of abstinence 
is often determined by purely personal considera- 
tions, which no ethical code could by any possi- 
bility deal with in a satisfactory way. "Thou 



JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 283 

shalt" reaches one man and "Thou shalt not" an- 
other in connection with the same act. It is a 
matter of tradition, if not of history, that John 
Wesley quit the pursuit of mathematics to avoid 
sinning against his own soul. The Spirit of God 
working through intellect and conscience, and 
often mysteriously instructing men, still illumi- 
nates and guides the individual. There can, in the 
very nature of things, be no complete ethical code 
for the government of any individual life. And 
God's plan for governing the race is, to an ex- 
tent not generally recognized, that of dealing 
with its members individually and directly. Ethi- 
cal codes, therefore, do not deal with the individual 
as an individual, so much as they meet him as a 
member of the social organism. 

Is, then, the ethical code of the Bible in all its 
particulars fitted to govern men of every clime 
and age to the end of human history? And is it 
complete? In other words, does it provide for 
every phase of human activity that has called, or 
will call, for righteous legislative control? 

The first fact calling for our attention here is 
that, when one is asked for the code we are now 
to discuss definitely, he can only reply that its 
various items may be found scattered through 
the various documents of which the Bible is com- 
posed, and that they cannot be codified, or set 
forth as a distinct body of laws, without the ex- 
penditure of much labor. The Bible is not an 
ethical code. It is something higher. It con- 



284 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

tains our most glorious revelation of God. As- 
sociated with that in the volume, however, are 
many ethical precepts. But any man who at- 
tempts the task of codifying these will find him- 
self compelled to do much sifting, for Christ and 
his apostles dealt rather freely with at least some 
portions of the Mosaic legislation. One of the 
latter, Paul, wrote of Christ that he "broke down 
the barrier that separated Jew and Gentile and in 
his human nature put an end to the cause of en- 
mity between them — the Law with its injunctions 
and ordinances." (Eph. 2:15.) To this he adds 
in another place, "He cancelled the bond which 
was against us — the bond which consisted of or- 
dinances — and which was directly hostile to us. 
He has taken it out of the way by nailing it to 
the cross." (Col. 2:15.) 

There has been much debate as to how far Paul 
really went in these statements and others which 
might be cited. But it can scarcely be doubted 
that he regarded his Lord as having, by his 
earthly life and his law of Love, not only set 
aside the elaborate ritual of Mosaism, but super- 
seded the whole moral code also, through the sub- 
stitution for it of the single inclusive principle 
of love. Consequently we find that his own chief 
aim was neither to master the ethical code of the 
past, nor to produce a perfect one for the guid- 
ance of himself and his fellow-believers, but to 
build up both himself and them in the knowledge 
of Christ. He saw that "Christ has brought 



JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 285 

Law to an end, so that righteousness may be ob- 
tained by every one who believes in him" (Rom. 10: 
4), and was a legalist no longer. He turned from 
the Law to the Life, to find a wealth both of in- 
formation and of motive touching righteousness 
to which he would have otherwise been a stranger. 
The least we can say is that the ethical code in 
which he had been reared became to Paul a poor, 
dwarfed thing, big enough still to awe the man 
who loved transgression, but too unenlightened 
and feeble to help greatly the Christian believer 
in his pursuit of the holiness of his Master. (I 
Tim. 1:9.) 

So the ethical code of the Old Testament met 
with disparagement at the hands of the most in- 
tellectual and voluminous of the New Testament 
writers. We cannot present the whole truth, how- 
ever, without stating besides, that he disparaged it 
only when he compared it with the one positively 
and resplendently perfect human life. Considered 
in itself, he both valued and used it. His letters 
contain many ethical precepts, original and 
quoted. He knew that the church needed them. 
He even accepted for his Gentile converts the 
regulations passed by the Jerusalem council for 
their guidance, though soon afterwards he assured 
at least one of his churches that the man who 
ignored them with a free conscience in a certain 
particular showed a more vigorous and intelligent 
faith than they did who obeyed at this point. 
(1 Cor. 8:6-8.) 



286 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

I should now attempt to define the term ethical 
code, for it is probably at this point the chief 
difficulty has arisen. An ethical code is a body 
of precepts or laws touching conduct, of such a 
sort that they make an appeal to the conscience. 
Every law which makes this appeal belongs to 
the ethical code of the man who receives it. The 
appeal arises from the recognized righteousness 
which the law represents. The law may deal with 
any phase of human life whatever — religious, 
political, social, sanitary, or sexual. All law that 
through its apparent rightness appeals to the 
conscience, is ethical. All legal codes are ethical 
codes! so far forth as they represent righteousness. 
To hold any other ground is to introduce con- 
fusion into both thought and life. Sanitary 
laws, for instance, are as sacred, though not as 
fundamental, as religious laws. Man's original 
and supreme relationship is Godward, and has 
to do with himself as distinguished from the mate- 
rial body, which he now inhabits and uses as his 
instrument for the accomplishment of his work in 
this world of matter. But he owes to his body, 
as Paul points out, the duty before God of nour- 
ishing, cherishing, guarding, and controlling it, 
not only as his own abode and instrument but also 
as the very temple of God himself. Every human 
relationship is' sacred and every duty moral. The 
Mosaic legislation in all its phases rests firmly upon 
the recognition of this fact. "Thus saith Jeho- 
vah" is its very keynote. It may be further said, 



JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 287 

too, that the voice of conscience and the recog- 
nized voice of God never conflict, because the 
former is so constituted that of necessity it makes 
itself an echo of the latter. It is only when the 
voice of God is not recognized by it, or has not 
yet reached it, that conscience directs into wrong 
paths. The voice of conscience, therefore, what- 
ever else it may stand for, represents all that men 
have learned of the will of God, and when God 
speaks to men at all, he wakes up their consciences 
to speak for him. This is true for all the ages. 
To forget or ignore it is to enter into darkness 
and pass on to disaster. Consequently all legisla- 
tion which is recognized as righteous is looked 
upon as a gift of God to those who receive it, and 
for the time being at least men rest and rejoice 
in it. 

God legislates for each time and people through 
the best combination of intellect and conscience 
then and there available. So all divine laws are 
at the same time human, though it is by no means 
true, on the other hand, that all human laws are 
also divine. Paul saw how other peoples besides 
his own were met in this matter, and provided 
with an illumination and guidance, which they 
often sadly misprized. (Rom. 1:19-21; 2:14, 15.) 
And one of the things we are coming to see clearly 
is that, as God dealt with these, so he dealt with 
Israel itself. "At many times and in many ways 
by the Prophets and then by his Son" 
(Heb. 1:1) he brought their intellect and con- 



288 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

science to the recognition and assertion of higher 
and wider applications of the great principles 
which should govern all human activities. Prog- 
ress is one law of our race which never grows 
old, never dies, and never ceases its operations. 
Many a legislative enactment dies through being 
superseded by a better, or because men march out 
of sight of it, leaving it behind to perish by the 
wayside. Progress is the fruit of God's working 
in men and men's working with God. 

We may now ask how the ethical code of the 
Bible has fared in this respect. Has it had the 
experience of all other codes? Or does it stand 
forth to-day as the one magnificent exception ? It 
is no part of my present undertaking to deal 
with this question exhaustively. All I need to 
do is to cite one or two instances in which Israel's 
ethical code has been left behind. To begin with, 
then, our Lord dismissed the laws of Mosaism 
governing divorce and the requital of injuries, 
and also the one touching oaths. The sanitary 
and land laws of Israel, good as they were upon 
the whole, were left behind in a body by the fol- 
lowers of Christ, and that in spite of the fact 
that the first great leaders among them were 
Jews. Not even circumcision was allowed to sur- 
vive. For a little while blood and the flesh of 
strangled animals, along with foods offered in 
sacrifice to idols, were forbidden to Christians ; 
but almost at once, as I have already pointed out, 
Paul attacked the last-named regulation, and be- 



JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 289 

fore long they all passed into oblivion, though the 
word in regard to them in the beginning was, 
"We have, therefore, decided, under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit," or "It seemed good to the 
Holy Ghost and to us." At this point New 
Testament legislation has been dismissed along 
with that of the Old Testament. It is interest- 
ing to note, too, that instead of a "Thou shalt 
not enslave thy fellow-man" in the Decalogue, a 
law immediately follows that code permitting 
slavery under restrictions, that is to say, licensing 
it. Jesus never called up that license law for 
condemnation in the days I of his flesh. His 
apostles, too, worked under it and other like legis- 
lation, with never a thought of its replacement by 
universal manumission, so far as we can tell. And 
no blame is due them because of this. License law 
is the beginning of prohibition, and those who cen- 
sure it are simply^ out of patience with it, perhaps 
not too soon, because it is not also the end. Yet 
after much painful toil Christendom climbed at 
length to the place where, so far as she herself 
is concerned, she left behind and below her, not 
only that law itself, but also all Paul's and Peter's 
inspired regulations for Christian slaves and their 
Christian masters. Every intelligent man knows 
these things, and knowing them believes, whether 
he realizes it or not, that some portions of the 
ethical code of the New Testament, as well as of 
the Old, were never adopted to be permanent. 
I may now deal with the other question which 



290 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

I have undertaken to discuss. Is the ethical code 
of the Bible complete? In other words, does it 
provide for every phase of human activity that 
has called, or will call, for righteous legislative 
control ? 

In answering the first question I have also an- 
swered this, but not pointedly. I shall, therefore, 
proceed to deal with it specifically, with the aid 
of two illustrative instances. At the Anglican 
Synod in New Brunswick, recently, one of the 
rural deans took issue with the bishop on the ques- 
tion of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, ground- 
ing his argument upon the fact that this traffic 
comes in for no condemnation in the New Testa- 
ment. We must confess that the rural dean was 
correct in this premise of his argument, and, as 
I have already pointed out, he might with perfect 
truthfulness have added that the New Testament 
is equally deficient when we come to the institution 
of slavery. Nevertheless the modern command, 
"Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow," is felt to- 
day to be quite as sacred and binding as "Thou 
shalt not steal" or "Thou shalt not bear false 
witness against thy neighbor." Besides this, all 
who are even fairly read in the history of the 
struggle against slavery as an institution know 
how the Bible was used by the pro-slavery advo- 
cates in its favor. Their argument was that an 
institution which the Bible licensed could never 
be sanely regarded as marked out by God for de- 
struction. The thing they did not know was 



JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 291 

that God did not complete his work as lawgiver 
in Bible times, but was working still through the 
intellects and consciences of his own, toward the 
annihilation of every institution and habit which 
is opposed to the highest welfare of our race. 
The rural dean in Fredericton was walking in a 
like darkness. And when one of the lay members 
of the Synod retorted that he did not care whether 
the Scott or Canada Temperance Act was in the 
Bible or not, he showed his faith in the fact that 
God is guiding our civilization to-day as really 
as he guided either Israel or the Christian Church 
at the beginning. One need only add that when 
at length Christendom, as a whole, finds itself liv- 
ing under an ethical code, one of the most recent 
additions to which will be "Thou shalt sell no 
intoxicating beverage," all the truly enlightened 
will rejoice together that this command also came 
from God in the same general manner as those 
previously received by our race, and that others 
will follow as they are needed. 

That the Bible contains all truth necessary for 
the salvation of the soul can be gladly accepted. 
It may also be affirmed with the utmost confidence, 
that it far surpasses all other ancient writings 
in the richness and variety of its ethical precepts, 
and that the New Testament is unique in the em- 
phasis which it lays upon love as the great govern- 
ing principle in all right conduct, and the very 
heart of every righteous disposition. This, how- 
ever, is a very different thing from the claim that 



292 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

it contains an ethical code lofty enough and com- 
plete enough for the guidance in all things of the 
highest Christian civilization ; for this claim vir- 
tually denies God's immutable law of progress, 
and a host of incontestable facts besides. 

In regard to those fresh additions to our ethi- 
cal code, which we need from time to time to guide 
us in connection with the various phases of our 
advancing civilization, and which represent a 
righteousness too large to have been set forth 
by any seer or apostle of the older time, we need 
entertain no worries. God himself takes care of 
these, and they always come to us when the time 
is ripe, like the morning sun when he breaks 
through black thunder clouds to bless us with his 
beams. On the other hand, the problem how we 
may decide as to precisely what is permanent, and 
what merely temporary, in the ethical code of the 
book we love most, is not an easy one. Mistakes 
have been made and will continue to be made here. 
Still we have, as qualified to hearten us for this 
task, every divine fact which God has been able 
to place within the range of our limited vision. 
The Christ life looms larger as the years pass. 
Those perfect religious and moral principles, con- 
sisting of "the first of all the commandments 
and the second," are still with us. On 
our lips is the word Immanuel, and, whether we 
realize it or not, God himself with all his righteous- 
ness, his wisdom, and his love, enswathes and pos- 
sesses us, as the very life of our life. 

When modern science was born some men were 



JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 293 

pagan enough to think that it had proved that, 
after his work of creation, God either emptied 
himself out of the physical universe, to give free 
play to a certain set of physical laws, or stayed 
on only to play the poor part of an observer. 
Theologians helped to overthrow that notion, but 
some of the theologians themselves still clung to 
an old notion of their own that, after God had 
got himself seers and lawgivers from among a 
small, but wonderful family of Asiatics, that was, 
through the longer portion of the period both 
idolatrous and corrupt, and so blind and rebel- 
lious at its close, that it had to be scourged out 
of its territories and chased to the ends of the 
earth, he retired from his active government of 
men, leaving them as their sole and sufficient writ- 
ten guide to the end, only the ethical code given 
them through these same splendid old-time Asiat- 
ics. It is well for us that these Asiatics them- 
selves entertained no such idea, and that we are 
beginning to understand our Christ and his apos- 
tles at this point. To be without God in the 
world, even when one has him in the church, is 
to live as a pagan, and usually as a pessimist, with 
no large and worthy hopes. But the new day has 
dawned, which is to reveal more and more clearly 
the fact that in Jesus Christ are hid all the fur- 
ther treasures of legislative wisdom and knowl- 
edge, which our race will call for in its long 
climb towards perfection. 

A brief chapter will now be devoted to the fur- 
ther discussion of this one point. 



XVIII 

JESUS AND THE PERFECT ETHICAL 
CODE 

I shall begin at the beginning. What is this 
perfect ethical code? Is it a thing of the past, 
present or distant future? And what relation, 
if any, does Jesus bear to it? 

In answering these questions one may begin 
negatively and say that an ethical code is not 
a set of ethical principles, any one of which may 
be applied to a variety of actions without actu- 
ally having been made binding in connection with 
any of them. Legislators sometimes proceed by 
way of resolution and the affirmation of great 
principles, as Disraeli attempted to do when he 
made that famous "leap in the dark," which re- 
sulted in the passage of the British Reform Bill 
in 1867 ; but they never produce even the first 
item of a code until they begin to make one or 
more of these principles binding upon men, in 
connection with one or more of their various 
activities. When a few years ago the Canadian 
government at Ottawa affirmed by a large major- 
ity that the prohibition of the liquor traffic was 
desirable for the whole Dominion, they added 
nothing whatever to the code of the country, and 



JESUS AND THE ETHICAL CODE 295 

the traffic remained as free as before. The par- 
liamentary affirmation that no man ought to sell 
intoxicating drinks, must be changed into the 
affirmation that no man shall do it without mak- 
ing himself liable to certain serious penalties, be- 
fore it can take its place in the ethical code of 
the state or church which the parliament governs. 
Apart from the nature of their sanctions or 
penalties, there is practically no difference be- 
tween a legal code and an ethical one, for each 
represents righteousness as righteousness is under- 
stood to apply to the various relations of human 
life at the time and place to which the code be- 
longs. Such a code, therefore, may represent 
the authority of a state or a church, or of both 
acting together or supplementing each other. 
Any particular code of laws is ethical in reality 
precisely as far as it represents what is right in 
itself between one human being and another, and 
between each human being and God in their multi- 
plied relationships. And any code to attain per- 
fection must possess two characteristics. It must 
represent absolutely nothing but righteousness, 
on the one hand, and it must represent all of 
righteousness, on the other. It must contain 
nothing either false or evil, and it must be com- 
plete. It must condemn everything that ought 
to be condemned, and enjoin everything that 
ought to be commanded and done. As long as 
it is lacking in either direction it remains im- 
perfect. 



296 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Does this mean that the perfect ethical code 
can be realized and applied only in connection 
with a perfect human society? One can sup- 
pose the existence of a person capable of pro- 
ducing this perfect code, long before its highest 
portions could be anywhere applied, but that such 
a person would actually produce it at such a 
time is extremely doubtful; for there is an econ- 
omy in the moral as well as the physical govern- 
ment of this planet, which makes it pretty certain 
that no ethical instrument will be forthcoming 
until it represents an existing need. But, on the 
other hand, the moment any law is actually re- 
quired, it is sure to find a framer. Our business 
just now, however, is not to speculate, but to look 
into facts. What relation then does Jesus bear 
to the perfect ethical code? 

Our 1 first answer is that he did not frame it, and 
never attempted that task. Like other wise men 
he simply dealt with conditions as he found them. 
He had no opportunity for giving laws to men 
as members of the state, because his fellow-citi- 
zens rejected him. Not even one city stood by 
him. The moment his aims were understood he 
was pronounced an impossibility in politics. This 
happened everywhere, until he was adjudged by 
the rulers of his nation worthy of only one place 
— a cross outside Jerusalem between two robbers, 
who also hung upon crosses. He gave no laws 
for the care of the body considered in itself — 
not one word on diet or medicine or surgery or 



JESUS AND THE ETHICAL CODE 297 

sanitation, though he showed a deep interest in 
the physical health and well-being of men. On 
matters connected with the training and nurture 
of the intellect, too, he was all but absolutely 
silent. He did teach that a man must consent 
to obey the truth which reached him, or become 
blind and deaf and past feeling in its presence, 
but he laid down no rules for school-masters and 
school-mistresses, or for parents interested in the 
intellectual development of their children. And 
apart from his teachings on forgiveness, he gave 
no hints as to what are the true methods in the 
treatment of criminals. Yet any human code 
which is to reach perfection must deal in the most 
thorough and exhaustive manner with all these 
phases of human existence. 

Jesus did not even meddle with some matters 
which men to-day regard as of vast moral impor- 
tance. Slavery and the drink habit and traffic 
were two of the greatest blots on the civilization 
of his time, but no word of his in regard to either 
has crossed the centuries to us. The slave we 
know he pitied was the bond-slave of sin. Nor 
did he blaze forth against political despotisms, al- 
though he counselled the twelve to avoid their 
spirit and cultivate instead the spirit of lowly 
service which he was constantly exemplifying under 
their gaze. 

With all these facts before us it is quite clear 
that Jesus did not play the part of the ordinary 
lawgiver, but accepted the political, social and 



298 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

even religious situation as he found it, and al- 
most in its entirety. Indeed one of his definite 
words at the end of his career was this — "The 
Teachers of the Law and Pharisees now occupy 
the chair of Moses. Therefore, practice and lay 
to heart everything that they tell you." (Matt. 
23:2.) 

How is it then that Jesus has been regarded 
as the supreme human lawgiver by such men as 
Tolstoi, for instance? Because the few injunc- 
tions which he did lay upon his followers touched 
life in the most vital way. He was the most con- 
vinced of all believers in the principle of evolution 
as it applies in the realm of legislation. So he 
simply went to the sacred books of his nation, 
drew from them two sentences and declared these 
the one fountain of law for all time. Then he 
proceeded to show how obedience to these prin- 
ciples would mold the inward and outward life 
of men in a few of their phases and directions. 
Here again he made no mistakes,; though in one or 
two essential particulars he went far in advance 
of his time. His laws forbidding every form of 
violence will never, because they can never, be even 
properly understood, until men shall at length 
have reached the point where they will obey them 
completely. Then men will also perceive the na- 
ture of his temptation to make the kingdoms of 
the world his own by becoming a ruler after the 
fashion of his own and succeeding, as well as previ- 
ous, times, and honor him as the Prince of Peace 



JESUS AND THE ETHICAL CODE 299 

indeed. Even to-day it is confessed on every hand 
that he was in himself the incarnation of all the 
law he voiced, and more. It is also acknowledged 
that legislative authority resides nowhere in such 
strength as in the spirit and conduct of a human 
life. Men are so constituted that they feel their 
sin rebuked by righteousness itself more than by 
all righteous precepts, and they can never look 
upon it with seeing eyes, without knowing them- 
selves called to its most earnest and devoted pur- 
suit. The life of Jesus condemns men more 
sternly than his lips ever did, and woos them to 
the life of love more persuasively than his uttered 
"Follow me." 

One of the laws of evolution is this. Each 
evolutionary process is preceded by an act or 
process of involution. Nothing can be drawn out 
that was not first put in. This is true of every 
great principle and every great life. Put little 
into a principle and you get little out of it. Put 
everything in and you can get everything out. 
The "two commandments" of Jesus represent the 
broadest possible generalization in the sphere of 
ethics, and this generalization stands incarnate in 
his person and conduct. Everything was put in 
and was there from the start, to reveal itself in 
its time. Part stands disclosed to-day ; the rest 
is to follow. The relationship of Jesus, therefore, 
to the perfect code which we have been consider- 
ing is like that of the sun to practically all the 
light and warmth our earth has enjoyed from 



300 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the moment it became dependent upon that orb. 
Out of himself and the great principles of right- 
eousness which he enunciated all helpful legislation 
is slowly being evolved in Christian lands, and 
the process will continue until all lands are Chris- 
tian and all human laws and institutions attain 
his own perfection. 

The perfect ethical code is, therefore, not an 
achievement of yesterday or to-day but of all the 
days till the time of its predestined completion. 
It represents the age-long travail of the soul of 
Jesus, and with it He will be satisfied. 



XIX 

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 

The thought and activity of each age of the 
church of Christ are conditioned or governed by 
some leading idea or ideas, which must be very 
clearly grasped by the church historian before 
he can hope to place before his readers a really 
true account of the events and teachings with 
which he has to deal. This statement is quite as 
true when applied to the apostolic age as in con- 
nection with any other age that can be named. 
It would probably be quite safe to put the case 
much more strongly than this, for the leading 
minds of that first Christian age were dominated 
by certain words of him who spoke as no one else 
ever did, to an extent never since equaled. It is 
therefore, the clearest possible duty of the inter- 
preter of the New Testament writings to give his 
first attention to this very matter. 

What, then, were the large governing ideas 
which affected Peter and John and Paul and all 
the rest, while they were preaching salvation from 
sin to righteousness to the unsaved, and to the 
saved the cultivation of every Christ-like virtue? 

The first of these governing ideas was the ab- 
solute assurance they had that Jesus of Nazareth 

301 



302 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

was the Christ, and that as such he had been 
given by God the Father himself, kingship over 
our whole race. They never thought of him as 
the great aspirant to that throne. On the con- 
trary they saw him firmly and immovably seated 
upon it. They knew that his foes were many and 
mighty. But this made no difference. Sitting 
there upon his throne he was simply looking for- 
ward in his conquering might to the time when 
the very last of these enemies would be removed 
from his kingdom, and none would remain but 
those who gladly acknowledged his sway. He 
was king first of all by divine right, but this 
divine right was so inherent in his very character, 
that he would finally, and of necessity, win the 
suffrages of the whole race. 
"The Lord said to my Master: 'Sit on my right 

hand, 
Till I put thy enemies as a footstool under thy 

feet.' 
So let the whole nation of Israel know beyond 
all doubt, that God has made him both Lord and 
Christ — this very Jesus whom you crucified." 
This was Peter's word the first time he ever opened 
his mouth to address the public on the claims of 
his risen master, and it was the word that moved 
his audience so remarkably. "It is this Jesus 
whom God has exalted to his right hand, to be a 
guide and a Savior, to give Israel repentance and 
forgiveness of sins." In these words and others 
like them, the fact which is given prominence is 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 303 

that Jesus is a spiritual Savior, but it is not 
forgotten that he is exalted to God's right hand, 
and that men must submit to him. Paul stand- 
ing in the court of Areopagus at Athens preached 
the need of repentance in view of our Lord's 
Kingly office of judge. "He has fixed a day on 
which he intends to 'judge the world with jus- 
tice' by a man whom he has appointed — and of 
this he has given all men a pledge by raising 
that man from the dead." And Paul's first ex- 
tant letter is full of this idea as it stands asso- 
ciated with that of our Lord's second coming. So 
also is the second. Both of these were written to 
the Thessalonians. And when four years later 
he wrote to the church at Corinth, he used lan- 
guage of the most definite sort on this point. 
"Then will come the end — when he surrenders the 
kingdom to his God and Father, having over- 
thrown all other rule and all other authority 
and power. For he must reign until God 'has 
put all his enemies under his feet.' The last 
enemy to be overthrown is death; for God has 
placed all things under Christ's feet." 

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews said: 
"He is the radiance of the glory of God and the 
very expression of his being, upholding all crea- 
tion by the power of his word; and, when he had 
made an expiation for the sins of men, he took 
his seat at the right hand of God's majesty on 
high, having shown himself as much greater than 
the angels as the name that he has inherited sur- 



304 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

passes theirs." This writer also heard him ad- 
dressed thus: 

"God is thy throne for ever and ever; 
Thou, Lord in the beginning didst lay the foundation 

of the earth, 
And the heavens are the work of thy hands. 
They shall perish but thou remainest; 
As a garment they shall all grow old; 
As a mantle thou wilt fold them up, 
And as a garment they shall be changed, 
But thou art the same, and thy years shall know no 

end." 

Finally, to quote no more, the author of the 
Apocalypse saw him gifted with all power, and 
bearing on his robe, and on his thigh the written 
words — "Kings of Kings and Lord of Lords," 
and followed him as he wrought out one after 
another his world-wide conquests. 

If we wish to! discover the source of this govern- 
ing idea, we can easily find it in the teachings of 
our Lord himself. "The Father Himself does 
not judge any man, but has entrusted the work 
of judging entirely to his Son, so that all men 
may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. 
And because he is the Son of Man he 
has also given him authority to act as judge. Do 
not wonder at this ; for the time is coming when 
all that are in their! graves will hear his voice, and 
will come out — those who have done good rising 
to life, and those who have lived evil lives rising 
for condemnation." John was responsible for this 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 305 

report of Jesus's words and Matthew for the fol- 
lowing : 

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been 
given to me. Therefore go and make disciples 
of all the nations, baptizing them into the Faith 
of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and 
teaching them to lay to heart all the commands 
that I have given you ; and, remember, I myself 
am with you every day] until the close of the age." 

In direct association with this idea of Christ 
as actual king and judge of the race with which 
he had allied himself, there stood in the minds of 
the apostles and first believers generally, that of 
his very early coming to perform a stupendous 
work of deliverance on behalf of his own. This 
second idea was never very long absent from their 
thoughts. Indeed it may well be said to have 
been present there always, particularly after they 
became the victims of furious persecution. "Turn- 
ing to God from your idols you became serv- 
ants of the true and living God, and are now 
awaiting the return from heaven of his Son, 
whom he raised from the dead — Jesus, our 
deliverer from the coming wrath," is one of 
the first words Paul ever wrote to a church ; 
and he penned it as early as the year 52. 
Passing over all else on the same subject, which 
is to be found in Paul's letters to the various 
churches, we may fix our attention on two writings 
which were produced about the time (68 or a little 
later) when he sealed his testimony with his blood. 



306 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

I refer to the letter to the Hebrews and the 
Revelation of John. 

Says the first writer to those whom he addresses, 
"You still have need of patient endurance, in order 
that, when you have done God's will, you may 
obtain the fulfillment of his promise. 'For there 
is indeed but a very little while ere he who is 
coming will have come, without delay.' " On the 
other hand the "Revelation of Jesus Christ" was 
his showing forth as ruler of the race and deter- 
miner of men's destinies. He will be speedily 
manifested as such, declared this writer "concern- 
ing what must shortly take place . . . for 
the time is near," he asserts. A part of his gen- 
eral message to the seven churches is — "He is com- 
ing among the clouds." Those whose eyes are 
open can see that the clouds now gathering such 
blackness are his, and that he is enthroned within 
them ; and the time will come, when it is too late to 
be benefited by the sight, in which "every eye shall 
see him, even those who pierced him; 'and all the 
nations of the earth shall wail for fear of him.' 
So shall it be. Amen." 

Carrying this thought forward into the in- 
dividual messages to these churches, the writer's 
word to Ephesus was, — "I will come and remove 
your lamp from its place, unless you repent" ; 
the word to Pergamos, — "Therefore, repent, or 
else I will come quickly and contend with such 
men (Nikolaitans, etc.) with words that will cut 
like a sword" ; the word of Sardis, — "Unless you 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 307 

are on the watch, I shall come like a thief, and 
you will not know at what hour I am coming 
to you" ; the word to Philadelphia, — "I will come 
quickly. Hold to what you have received, that 
no one may take your crown" ; and to the church 
at Laodicea, — " 'All whom I love I rebuke and 
discipline.' Therefore be in earnest and repent. 
I am standing at the door and knocking, so near 
am I. If any one hears my voice and opens the 
door, I will go in, and will feast with him, and he 
shall feast with me. To him who conquers — to 
him I will give the right to sit beside me on my 
throne, as I, when I conquered, took my seat be- 
side my Father on his throne." 

One cannot but remark that here we find Peter's 
idea of an immediate judgment which makes its 
beginning at the house of God. And as this book 
opens so it closes. The conditions of entrance 
into the four-square city which John saw coming 
down from God out of heaven, and transforming 
all earthly states and surroundings, are set forth, 
and the things named which make admission to 
it impossible. But the one thing insisted upon and 
reiterated is that the time for the fulfillment of 
the prophecies is at hand. "I will come quickly," 
says a voice, "I bring my rewards with me, to 
give to each man what his actions deserve. So 
near am I that the wrong-doer will not have 
time to turn from his wrong-doing, nor the filthy- 
minded man from his filthiness, nor the righteous 
man from his righteousness, nor the holy minded 



308 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

man from his holiness, before I arrive. . . . 
Assuredly I will come quickly" (Rev. 22:10-12), 
he repeats ; and — "Amen, come, Lord Jesus," 
is the ready response of those whom he is ad- 
dressing. 

We know what the author has in mind, for he 
is writing in the year 68 or a little later. He is 
recalling the words of our Lord which Matthew 
recorded. He knows that his Lord is coming in 
connection with the destruction of the old de- 
filed Jerusalem, to establish the holy city, New 
Jerusalem, and to carry on within it that rule 
which he has already described. His ears con- 
tinually hear the words — "Assuredly I will come 
soon," and his heart unceasingly responds, — 
"Amen, come Lord Jesus," come and put thy 
hand publicly and ! openly to thy great world task, 
so that all mankind may see thee and bow be- 
fore the greatness of thy majesty. 

Every note struck by the disciple in this book 
was struck (in his hearing?) by the Master him- 
self 36 or 37 years before. The world taken by 
surprise in the midst of its follies and excesses ; 
the faithful servant abundantly rewarded and the 
unfaithful one flogged severely and allotted his 
place among hypocrites ; the wise virgins with 
lamps ready and oil in their cans, and the foolish 
ones with no oil can at all, when the bridegroom 
came, are some of our Lord's pictures of the 
things which would occur when he came again. 
And as to the time of that coming, he fixed it most 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 309 

definitely, with the one reservation, that about the 
actual day and hour, no one had at the time he 
was speaking, "any knowledge; not even the an- 
gels of heaven, nor yet the Son himself, — but 
only the Father." But he constantly taught in 
the most positive manner that it would take place 
during the life-time of some who listened to his 
solemn predictions concerning it. 

Speaking to the twelve as he sent them forth 
on a tour of preaching and healing, he told them 
of persecutions they met with only after his 
resurrection and ascension, and said, — "When 
they persecute you in one town, escape to the next ; 
for, I tell you, you will not have come to the 
end of the towns of Israel before the Son of Man 
comes." Later when our Lord, after his trans- 
figuration, foretold his death, and Peter rebuked 
him for indulging in such gloomy forebodings, he 
assured Peter and the rest that discipleship to 
him meant parting with! much and suffering much, 
and then went on to say, — "The Son of Man is 
to come in his Father's glory, with his angels, and 
then he 'will give to every man what his actions 
deserve.' I tell you, some of those who are stand- 
ing here will not know death till they have seen 
the Son of Man coming into his kingdom." We 
remember our Lord's words of blistering denunci- 
ation against the leading men among his people. 
The ever recurring refrain of them was, — "Alas 
for you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites that you are!" until at length he utters a 



310 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

prediction in these words, — "You serpents and 
brood of vipers ! How can you escape being sen- 
tenced to the pit? That is why I send you 
prophets, wise men, and teachers of the law, some 
of whom you will crucify and kill, and some of 
whom you will scourge in your synagogues and 
persecute from town to town ; in order that upon 
your heads may fall every drop of innocent 
'blood spilt on earth,' from the blood of innocent 
Abel down to that of Zechariah, Barachiah's son, 
whom you murdered between the temple and the 
altar. All this, I tell you, will come home to the 
present generation." After listening to these aw- 
ful predictions of our Lord "his disciples came up 
to him and privately said, — 'Tell us when this will 
be, and what will be the sign of your coming and 
of the close of the age.' " And sitting there upon 
the Mount of Olives Jesus gave them that very 
complete reply, which covers the whole of the 
24th and 25th of Matthew, besides a part of Mark 
13th and Luke 21st. Summarized, the reply was 
this : Before this coming of mine there will be 
pretended Christs ; wars and warlike rumors ; fam- 
ines, pestilences, earthquakes ; bitter persecution 
of you, my disciples ; backslidings from me, and the 
preaching of my gospel throughout the world as 
a testimony to all nations. "Then will come the 
end of this age, with the foul desecration mentioned 
by the prophet Daniel, standing in the Holy 
Place (the reader must consider what this means). 
. Wherever a dead body lies, 'there will 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 311 

the vultures flock.' Immediately after the dis- 
tress of those days, 'the sun will be darkened, 
the moon will not give her light, the stars will fall 
from the heavens, and the forces of the heavens 
will be convulsed.' Then will appear the sign of 
the Son of Man in the heavens ; and all the peoples 
of the earth will mourn, when they see the Son 
of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with 
power and great glory ; and he will send his an- 
gels, with a great trumpet, and they will gather 
his people round him from the four winds, from 
one end of heaven to the other." 

The disciples are listening intently, and now 
they break in upon him with the word, — "But 
when, Master? May we not know the time?" 
And in the same even tones of assured knowledge 
and full authority he continued, — "Learn the les- 
son taught by the fig tree. As soon as its 
branches are full of sap, and it is bursting into 
leaf, you know that summer is near. And so 
may you, as soon as you see all these things, 
know that he is at your doors. I tell you, even 
the present generation will not pass away, till all 
these things have taken place. The heavens and 
the earth will pass away, but my words shall never 
pass away." 

Nothing is clearer than the fact that the first 
Christians believed that our Lord's second coming, 
with all the power and glory and dread which he 
himself associated with it, would take place be- 
fore that generation passed away, which listened 



312 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

to his) teachings and saw his mighty deeds and his 
mightier life. 

When these disciples asked the Lord about the 
sign and time of his coming again, they coupled 
with that coming what they called "the close of 
the age." What did they mean by the close of 
the age? Unfortunately for English speaking 
peoples, the King James translators called this 
close of the age "the end of the world," and thus 
suggested a theme which was not in the minds of 
these disciples at all. What they wanted Jesus 
to tell them was, when the order of things then 
existing would give place to the new and better 
institutions which he had come to establish. 
They had very incomplete, not to say false ideas 
as to what the changes were to be, towards which 
under our Lord's tuition they had learned to look. 
But they were sure that he was to bring the old 
dying age to an end, and introduce an age which 
would be his own, and great and glorious like 
himself. 

The age that was going out was to them the 
age of the Jew, on the one hand, and of the Gen- 
tile on the other. It was, on the one hand, the 
age of Mosaism with its doctrine of the divine 
unity, its bloody sacrifices and endless rites and 
ceremonies, and its sad lack of real righteous- 
ness ; and on the other, of heathen idolatries, pol- 
lutions and tyrannies. To the disciples of Jesus 
this age was specially represented by Jewish 
hostility to their Master and his gospel of salva- 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 31S 

tion, through the attainment of a righteousness, 
which to these Jews seemed) so impossible and fool- 
ish that they rewarded both the thing itself and 
Him who insisted upon it as their only hope, with 
the most implacable hatred. These disciples be- 
lieved in Jesus most confidently, but they wanted 
more light as to his plans. When would he break 
down this Jewish opposition, attain the place of 
king, and successfully cope with every resistance 
and difficulty besides ? Our Lord's answer was that 
he would do it at his "coming," and that this com- 
ing of his would take place within the life-time 
of the generation to which they themselves be- 
longed. 

That the apostolic church understood his words 
in this way is abundantly clear. Let us cite a few 
passages in evidence, in the order in which they 
were written. 

"God deems it just to inflict suffering on those 
who are now inflicting suffering upon you, and 
to give relief to you who are suffering, as well as 
to us, at the appearing of the Lord Jesus from 
heaven with his mighty angels, 'in flaming fire.' " 
(2 Thess. 1:6, 7, A. D. 53.) 

"There is no gift in which you are deficient while 
waiting for the appearing of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and God himself will strengthen you to 
the end, so that at the day of our Lord Jesus 
Christ you may be found blameless." (1 Cor. 1 : 
7, 8, A. D. 57.) 

"These things happened to them by way of 



314 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

warning and were recorded as a caution to us, in 
whose days the ends of the ages have come." 
(1 Cor. 10:11, A. D. 57.) 

"Our salvation is nearer now than when we 
accepted the faith. The night is almost gone; 
but the day is near." (Rom. 13:11, A. D. 58.) 

It should be noted that "Salvation" in this last 
passage must of necessity mean a temporal deliver- 
ance of some sort. For those who were looking 
for it were already enjoying salvation in the 
spiritual sense. Between the years 65 and 68 
Peter wrote "to the people of God who are liv- 
ing abroad, dispersed throughout Pontus, Galatia, 
Cappadocia, Roman Asia, and Bithynia . . . 
who, through faith, are being guarded by the 
power of God, awaiting a salvation that is ready 
to be revealed in the last days. At the thought 
of this," he declares, "you are full of exultation. 
It was this salvation that the prophets, 
who spoke long ago of the blessing intended for 
you, sought, and strove to comprehend; as they 
strove to discern what that time could be, to which 
the spirit of Christ within them was pointing, when 
foretelling the sufferings that would befall Christ, 
and the glories that would follow." So Peter 
made the same distinctions between salvations that 
Paul did. There was the salvation of the 
soul which was received as the reward of 
faith, and there was "a salvation that was 
ready to be revealed in the last days." How 
vividly Paul makes this great fact stand out in 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 315 

his latest word on the second coming, as such — 

"The state of which we are citizens is in 
Heaven; and it is from heaven that we are 
eagerly looking for a Savior, the Lord Jesus 
Christ. ... The Lord is near." (Phil. 
3:20; 4:5, A. D. 61.) 

How beautifully, too, some words of James 
lend their emphasis here! "Be patient then, 
brothers, till the coining of the Lord . . 
for the Lord's coming is near. . . . The 
Judge is already standing at the door." (Jas. 
5:7, 8, 9.) 

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews, too, 
has a most helpful word, which shows us, on the 
one hand, that our Lord's death took place at 
"the close of the age," as the apostolic church 
understood the phrase, and on the other, that his 
second coming would be for the deliverance of 
those who were then eagerly looking for him. 
"But now, once for all, at the close of the age, 
he has appeared, in order to abolish sin by the 
sacrifice of himself . . . and the second time 
he will appear — but without any burden of sin — 
to those who are waiting for him, to bring salva- 
tion." (Heb. 9:26, 28.) 

Nothing can be clearer than the fact that all 
the thought and work of the apostolic church was 
saturated with the idea that its Lord was speed- 
ily to be revealed in awful majesty, to free them 
from their foes and introduce a better day. And 
here again let us remind ourselves that this expec- 



316 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

tation was based upon our Lord's own words : 
"As soon, however, as you see Jerusalem sur- 
rounded by! armed camps, then you may know that 
the hour of her desecration is at hand. Then 
those of you who are in Judea must take refuge 
in the mountains, those who are in Jerusalem must 
leave at once, and those who are in the country 
places must not go into it. For these are to be 
the days of Vengeance, when all that scripture 
says will be fulfilled. Alas for the women that are 
with child, and for those that are nursing infants 
in those days ! For there will be great suffering 
in the land, and anger against this people. They 
will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be 
taken prisoners to every land, and 'Jerusalem will 
be under the heel of the Gentiles,' until their day 
is over, as it shall be. There will be signs, too, 
in the sun and moon and stars, and on earth 
despair among the nations, in their dismay at the 
roaring of the sea and the surge. Men's hearts 
will fail them through dread of what is coming 
on the world; for 'the forces of the heavens will 
be convulsed.' Then will be seen the 'Son of man 
coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. 
And when these things begin to occur, look up- 
wards and lift your heads, for your deliverance 
will be at hand. ... I tell you that even the 
present generation will not pass away till all has 
taken place. The heavens and the earth will pass 
away, but my words will never pass away." 
(Luke 21 : 20-28, 32, 33.) 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 317 

Here, then, in one paragraph of our Lord's 
teaching, is point after point of that which his 
disciples taught after him. 

But we have not yet exhausted the language in 
which these apostolic Christians expressed them- 
selves on the subject which was so dear to them 
in all their life of doing and suffering. On the 
day of Pentecost Peter spoke to his vast audience 
of "the last days" and "the day of the Lord — 
that great and awful day," and in his second 
letter he asserts, as taught long before by the 
Master himself, "the day of the Lord will come 
like a thief." "You see the day drawing near," 
— the most awful and; yet most blessed of all these 
last days, was a word "to the Hebrews." "You 
have heaped up wealth in these last days, you 
will find that you have heaped up fire," wrote 
James warningly to the silver-lovers of Jerusalem. 
"God has in these latter days spoken to us through 
his Son. . . . Beware of refusing to hear him 
who is speaking," is another New Testament 
warning. 

The enthroned Christ reigning, and to reign 
till all acknowledge his sway ; a coming of his, 
glorious alike in its terrors and its blessings, 
to take place very soon; their lives passing in 
connection with the close of an age, which would 
end so early, that their days as these dawned and 
faded, were to be thought of only as the last 
days, — such were the governing ideas, the intel- 
lectual and spiritual atmosphere in which these 



318 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

first Christians lived their hours and did their 
striving. 

But our presentation of their mental and spirit- 
ual situation is not yet quite complete. They 
associated the resurrection of the dead — the right- 
eous dead at least, with the coming of their Lord 
at the very close of the age. This is as plain 
as any fact in the New Testament. It comes out 
most distinctly in Paul's first letter, that to the 
Thessalonians, written, let us repeat, about the 
year 52. And Paul never in the slightest degree 
receded from his first position, but fortified it 
and kept disclosing the larger facts connected with 
it. It was probably this common belief that the 
resurrection of the dead would occur in connec- 
tion with the Lord's second coming which, through 
some process of reasoning not easy to guess now, 
led such men as Hymenaeus and Philetus to con- 
clude and teach that it had already taken place, 
and so to bring upon themselves that rebuke of 
Paul which we find in his second letter to Timothy. 

But what warrant, if 1 , any, had the apostle Paul 
for teaching as he did on this subject? None at 
all? Was he quite mistaken? Or had he rightly 
interpreted his Lord at this point also? 

Jesus said to Martha, — "Your brother shall 
rise to life." "I know that he will," replied 
Martha, "in the resurrection at the last day." 
Was this the subject on which Jesus had talked 
with Mary when "Martha herself was distracted 
with the many preparations she was making?" 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 319 

And did Martha catch enough of the Lord's teach- 
ing in spite of her worries to enable her to give 
this intelligent answer to his word about Lazarus's 
rising? However that may have been, Jesus had 
taught at least a little publicly on the great 
theme. "It is the will of my Father that every 
one who sees the Son, and believes in him, should 
have immortal life; and I myself will raise him 
up at the last day. . . . No one can come to 
me unless the Father who sent me draws him to 
me ; and I will raise him up at the last day. . . . 
He who takes my flesh for his food, and drinks 
my blood, has immortal life ; and I will raise him 
up at the last day." (John 6:40, 44, 54.) 

Was Paul wrong in his understanding of this 
teaching of our Lord? Was "the last day," 
after all, not at the close of the Mosaic age, but 
a day to be waited for till the close of this Chris- 
tian era? There is certainly a lively satisfaction 
for a certain class of minds in being able to point 
out the mistakes of great men, and the finer the 
inspiration of the writers and teachers criticised, 
the keener the enjoyment of their overconfident 
reviewers. It may, however, be as well for us 
not to pronounce Paul and the apostolic church 
generally, in error on these points, till we have 
heard from them further. 

Whether, however, they were mistaken or not, 
their lives were certainly lived in the atmosphere 
of these great expectations. Their Lord reigned 
and was coming to deliver and gloriously uplift 



320 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

his people. Then those of their number who had 
fallen under the power of death, and those who 
were yet to fall under its power before the day- 
arrived, would all be raised from the dead; while 
those who would be alive when he came, would 
share in the deliverance, and experience a change 
corresponding to that of the resurrection itself. 
So lively were these beliefs and hopes that in 
Thessalonica and Corinth at least they even 
threatened industry and interfered with the nor- 
mal life of the family — a fact which can be veri- 
fied by even a hasty glance at 2nd Thess. 8:7-16 
andl Cor. 7:29-35. 

This chapter may serve as a brief introduction 
to a large subject. Any one wishing some ade- 
quate acquaintance with the great governing ideas 
of the apostolic church and the ends towards which 
all its preaching and living and striving and suf- 
fering were continually directed must either pre- 
pare or peruse a word on these three themes — ■ 
Jesus as Deliverer from Death, Jesus and Na- 
tional Destiny and Jesus as Complete Savior. 
The three chapters which follow this will, there- 
fore, be devoted to a discussion of these phases of 
New Testament teaching. 



XX 

JESUS THE DELIVERER FROM DEATH 

The resurrection, considered by; itself, is a post 
mortem deliverance of the human body from the 
power of disease and death. At least it is so 
presented in the Christian scriptures. Accord- 
ingly we have in Daniel the words : "And many of 
them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame 
and everlasting contempt" (Chapter 12:2) ; and in 
Matthew — 

"The tombs opened, and the bodies of many of 
God's; people who had fallen asleep rose, and leav- 
ing their tombs, went, after the resurrection of 
Jesus, into the Holy City, and appeared to many 
people." (Chapter 27:52, 53.) And the resur- 
rection of our Lord himself was regarded by both 
Peter and Paul, as all the more a triumph over 
the last enemy, because his body did not even 
undergo corruption before its deliverance was ef- 
fected. (Acts 2 :31 ; 13, 36.) 

But the New Testament writers did not long 
consider the resurrection as an event which could 
be thought of by itself. On the contrary they 
very early came to see that it stood in most inti- 
mate association with things which were even 
321 



A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

greater than it was. The body of their Master 
had escaped corruption, but if that had been all, 
what would have been the advantage? For flesh 
and blood, as they knew them, and as we know 
them, there is no escape from corruption that can 
be considered permanent. To rescue the body 
from death is only to see it fall under the power 
of death again, unless you can have its flesh and 
blood changed into something superior. So they 
came to see that, not the resurrection of the body, 
but its transmutation from the perishable to the 
imperishable, from the disfigured to the beautiful, 
from the frail to the strongs — in a word from an 
animal body to a spiritual body, was the great 
event which had taken place in the case of their 
Master, and that a like change was the thing 
which they were to anticipate for themselves. 
And, as we know, they learned to look forward to 
it with eager longing and expectancy. 

"This I say, Brothers — Flesh and blood can 
have no share in the kingdom of God, nor can the 
perishable share the imperishable. Listen, I will 
tell you God's secret purpose. We shall not all 
have passed to our rest, but we shall all undergo 
a change — in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
eye, at the last trumpet call ; for the trumpet will 
sound, and the dead will rise immortal and we, 
also, shall undergo a change. For this perishable 
body of ours must put on an imperishable 
form, and this dying body a deathless form." 
("Undergo a change" is from the tentative 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 323 

edition and is most expressive.) 1 Cor. 50-53. 

"And we, also, shall undergo a change," became 
a favorite text with Paul, and he made it, through 
the Holy Spirit's enlightenment, a subject of much 
fruitful thought. "And we, also, shall undergo a 
change" — we who are still living in the flesh when 
the Lord comes again — and we shall not need a 
resurrection from the dead: the change will take 
its place so far as we are concerned — such was the 
burden of the apostle's musing. 

Now if we allow ourselves to ponder for a mo- 
ment, we shall see what large possibilities stand 
connected with this idea. All we have to do is 
to hold in our minds the fact that Paul and the 
Church generally, whether right or wrong, be- 
lieved that our Lord was coming in judgment, 
for the destruction of his foes and the deliver- 
ance of his own, while some of themselves were 
still living; and that the resurrection of the dead 
would take place and this change be introduced 
in connection with that coming; to see how far 
his reflection might bear him along. The race 
was to live on, the generations were to follow 
each other as before, and a change was to be 
effected in the living, which would make them 
possessors of spiritual bodies, like those which 
would be bestowed upon the dead, in connection 
with their resurrection at the coming of the Judge. 
How far would this change be carried during the 
progress of the coming ages? Would it go so 
far that at length no believer's body would see 



324 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

corruption any more than that of the Master 
did? Might it not even be carried to the point 
of saving men from disease and death altogether? 

Paul seems to have gone to this utmost length 
in his study of the matter, or, as we would per- 
haps better say, in his enlightenment by the Holy 
Spirit in relation to the subject. Fortunately 
we know the order in which his books or letters 
were written, and can follow the current of his 
thinking. And this we shall now proceed to do. 

About sixteen years after Jesus of Nazareth 
had revealed himself to Saul of Tarsus, the 
Jewish arch-persecutor of his followers, as the 
risen and glorified Messiah; and about four }^ears 
subsequent to the definite entrance of the new 
apostle upon his great life-work, as a missionary 
to other peoples besides his own ; Paul wrote the 
earliest of those letters of his which have come 
down to us — the first to the Thessalonians. One 
of the things which this letter most clearly re- 
veals is, that these Christian converts of a year 
or less needed further instruction touching the 
resurrection than they had received, and that 
Paul recognized the fact. It would seem that 
one or more of their number had already died, 
and that they were troubled by the fear that 1 these 
and others who might yet fall under the power of 
disease and death, before that glorious coming 
of the Master, in which their evangelizer had 
taught them to believe, would be shut off from 
every possibility of sharing in the great deliver- 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 325 

ance which he was to effect for his own when he 
came. Paul's answer to this fear of theirs was 
a very graphic description of the events which 
would attend the coming 1 . 

"We do not wish you to remain in ignorance, 
Brothers, with regard to those who have passed 
to their rest, that your grief may not be! like that 
of others who have no hope. For as we believe 
that Jesus died and rose again, so also we be~ 
lieve that God will bring, with Jesus, those who 
through him have passed to their rest. This we 
tell you on the authority of the Lord — that those 
of us who are still living at the coming of the 
Lord will not anticipate those who have passed 
to their rest. For, with a loud summons, with 
the shout of an arch-angel, and with the trumpet 
call of God, the Lord himself will come down from 
Heaven. Then, those who died in union with 
Christ shall rise first ; and afterwards we who are 
still living shall be caught up in the clouds, with 
them, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so we 
shall be forever with the Lord. . . . For 
God destined us not for wrath but to win salva- 
tion through our Lord Jesus Christ ; who died 
for us that, whether we are still watching or have 
fallen asleep, we may live with him." (I Thess. 
4:13-17; 5:9.) 

His teaching here was certainly that the 
resurrection of believers would be the first earthly 
response to a glorious coming of Christ, which 
some of these Thessalonians would in all prob- 



326 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ability witness before many years had passed. 
The precise time of the events no one could tell, 
but that made them none the less certain. The 
exact hour of birth-pangs or of the coming of a 
burglar cannot be predicted, he went on to argue, 
but birth-pangs and burglaries occur, neverthe- 
less, and men know that they must not live in 
utter forgetfulness of them. Nor could any one 
of that time afford to ignore these stupendous 
events, for they would not be long delayed. 

It will probably be best for us to defer the 
general discussion of the resurrection, in its re- 
lation to the coming of our Lord till we have 
taken up in their historic order all Paul's words 
upon it. But before going any further, we must 
note his assertion here, that after those who died 
in Christ will arise, "we who are still living shall 
be caught up into the clouds with them to meet 
the Lord in the air; and so we shall be forever 
with the Lord." 

In Revelation we read of the two Christian 
witnesses who were persecuted and slain that 
"after three days and a half the lifegiving breath 
of God entered into these men, and they stood 
up upon their feet and a great terror took posses- 
sion of those who were watching them. The two 
men heard a loud voice from heaven which said 
to them — 'Come up here,' and they went up to 
heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched 
them." (Rev. 11:11.) 

Here was an escape of God's people from their 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 327 

persecutors, and reading on we find that it was 
succeeded by awful judgments upon these per- 
secutors themselves, and these judgments again 
by the psean of triumph — 

"The kingdom of the world has become the 
kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he 
will reign for ever and ever" (Rev. 11 :15) ; and — 

"We thank thee, O Lord our God, the Almighty 
who art and who wast, that thou hast assumed thy 
great power and reigned. The nations were en- 
raged and thy wrath fell upon them ; the time 
came for the dead to be judged, and for thee to 
give the reward to thy servants the prophets, 
and to the people of Christ and to those who 
reverence thy name — the high and the low alike 
— and to destroy those that are destroying the 
earth." (Rev. 11:17, 18.) 

Again we have the vision of "the Dragon 
standing in front of the woman who is about to 
give birth to the child, so that he may devour it 
as soon as it is born. The woman gave birth to 
a son, a male child, who is destined to rule all the 
nations with an iron rod; and her child was at 
once caught up to God upon his throne; while 
the woman fled into the wilderness where there is 
a place prepared for her by God, to be tended 
there for twelve hundred and sixty days." (Rev. 
12:4-6.) 

Being caught up for safety is the idea com- 
mon to all these passages, and in the last one the 
wilderness is linked with the divine throne as a 



328 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

place of refuge. They all refer to the same 
event. The woman is the apostolic church. So, 
too, are the two witnesses. Or, at the very least, 
they must be taken as representing that church 
in its Judaic section. In the woman's escape to 
the wilderness we read the story of the Church's 
escape from Jerusalem before that doomed city 
went down in fire and blood. Its escape was so 
complete that it might well be figured forth by 
the bringing back to life and bearing up to 
heaven in a cloud, of two witnesses for Christ, 
who represented the whole people as in Zechariah's 
vision did "the two sons of oil that stand by the 
Lord of the whole earth." In the account of 
these two witnesses, too, we have both of the 
leading ideas of the word of Paul which we have 
been considering — the rising to life on the one 
hand, and the being caught up in the clouds on 
the other. Living believers borne into safety 
(along with those who have been raised from the 
dead) and afterwards restored to their proper 
activities here, was the idea Paul had in his mind 
when he wrote his word about their being "caught 
up in the clouds ... to meet the Lord in 
the air," as he descended in judgment. This is 
the only interpretation which will harmonize with 
Paul's more fully developed teachings on the 
general subject, as we shall see. Nor is his rea- 
son for using such apocalyptic terms hard to 
guess. The persecutor was near and threaten- 
ing. 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 329 

The resurrection of the dead and deliverance 
and refuge for the living believer, are the two 
ideas, then, with which Paul first meets us. His 
next word on the subject is found in the fifteenth 
chapter of first Corinthians — 

"We shall not all have passed to our rest, but 
we shall all undergo a change — in a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet- 
call ; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will 
rise immortal, and we also shall undergo a change." 
(I Cor. 15:51, 52.) 

We have already noted the fact that the apostle 
here brings forward in the most confident way, 
the assertion that those believers who would them- 
selves be alive in the flesh at the time their 
brethren who had gone to their rest would 
be raised from the dead, would find no 
resurrection awaiting them, but would become 
the subjects of "a change," such as would make 
them possessors of imperishable bodies like those 
of their resurrected brethren. And to pave the 
way for this new idea, he entered into quite an 
elaborate discussion of the resurrection itself. 
In doing so, he declared that the resurrection 
would be no mere resuscitation — that in point of 
fact the old body of flesh and blood would not 
rise at all. 

"Some one, however, may ask, 'How do the dead 
rise?' and 'in what body will they come?' You 
foolish man, the seed you yourself sow does not 
come to life unless it dies ! And when you sow, 



A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

you sow not the body that will be, but a mere 
grain — perhaps of wheat or something else. 
God gives it the body that he pleases — to each 
seed its special body. . . ." 

Thus Paul suggested that it was the living 
germ that mattered most. For the vegetable 
form which results from the sowing of a seed is 
derived to only a slight extent from the seed it- 
self. The form which we are to have is built up 
almost wholly of outside materials which the 
living organism has the power of seizing upon 
and assimilating to itself. What is the germ 
in man? Paul does not answer further than to 
assure us that it is very largely, at least, inde- 
pendent of flesh and blood. It is not the animal 
life, for it does not build up an animal body. On 
the other hand he declares that the body it builds 
up is a spiritual one, and thus shuts us up to 
the conclusion that it is spiritual in its nature. 
His teaching,! (therefore, regarding the change 
which was to be effected in the living, and which 
was to take the place of the work wrought in 
the case of the dead, in connection with their 
resurrection, would clearly seem to be that the 
life which made them spiritual entities would build 
for itself a spiritual body, while it still remained 
in connection with the old body of flesh and blood ; 
and that this new order of things would be estab- 
lished simultaneously with the occurrence of the 
resurrection itself. (Vrs. 53, 54 N. T. in M. S.) 

That this is really what he had in his mind is 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 331 

made clearer still by words contained in his next 
letter to the Corinthians — 

"We are not fixing our attention on what is 
seen, but on what is unseen ; for what is seen is 
temporary, but what is unseen is enduring." 

Having stated this he went on to tell these be- 
lievers that it was the seen body and the unseen 
body that he was contrasting with each other. 

"For we know that if our tent — that earthly 
body which is now our home is taken down, we 
have a house of God's building, a home not made 
by hands, imperishable, in Heaven. Even while 
we are in our present body we sigh, longing to 
put over it our heavenly dwelling, sure that, when 
we have put it on, we shall never be found without 
bodies ! 1 For we who are in this 'tent' sigh un- 
der our burden, unwilling to take it off, yet wish- 
ing to put our heavenly body over it, so that all 
that is mortal may be absorbed in Life. And 
He who has prepared us for this change is God, 
who has also given us his Spirit as the pledge 
of it." (2nd Cor. 5:1-5.) 

"We shall never be found without bodies," 
when once the resurrection is past and the new 
order set up. "For we who are in this 'tent' 
sigh under our burden, unwilling to take it off, 
yet wishing to put our heavenly body over it, so 
that all that is mortal may be absorbed in Life." 

i "Without bodies" is from the tentative edition. Why- 
obsolete, ugly, misleading, "discarnate" was dragged forth 
to take its place in the revision, who shall say? 



332 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

The mortal absorbed in Life — absorbed, taken 
up, caused to disappear — the seen body swallowed 
up by the unseen body — we shall find other words 
of his on this point in his letter to the Romans. 
In the meantime let us note what he further says 
here : 

"And he who has prepared us for this change 
is God, who has also given us his spirit as a 
pledge of it." 

We have now before us in Paul's teaching an 
unseen body enveloping and interpenetrating the 
seen body of flesh and blood, and the vision of his 
joy in view of the possibility of that condition 
entering into the actual experience of himself and 
those to whom he was writing. Then the "tent" 
of flesh and blood will not matter so much, he 
exults. It will no longer be possible to render 
us bodiless when that time comes. So far Paul; 
but John's vision of the souls crying under the 
altar is another proof of the existence of this 
faith and this yearning in the apostolic church. 
(Rev. 6:9-11.) With the coming of the Judge 
and Deliverer they would reach their full felicity, 
through the attainment of their spiritual bodies. 
So the living and the dead joined each other in the 
one great cry. And the souls under the altar 
"were each given a white robe, and they were told 
to rest yet a little longer, till the number of their 
fellow servants and of their Brothers who were 
about to be put to death, as they had been, should 
be complete." The wide-spread extent of this 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 333 

yearning is one of the startling revelations of 
Romans 8:18-25. In this passage Paul tells us 
that "All Nature awaits with eager expectation 
the appearing of the Sons of God. For Nature 
was made subject to imperfection — not by its own 
choice — but owing to him who made it so — yet 
not without the hope that some day Nature also 
will be set free from enslavement to decay and 
will attain to the freedom which will mark the 
glory of the children of God." (Rom. 8:19-21.) 

And when we ask what the glory of God's son 
is to be, Paul answers that it will reach its height 
in) the realization or attainment of "our full adop- 
tion as sons — the redemption of our bodies." 
(Rom. 8:23.) 

Now the redemption of the body, in the case 
of those who had died was to be accomplished by 
means of the resurrection. But what of those 
who were alive in the flesh? Paul's answer was 
that they, also, were to be freed from that en- 
slavement to decay, or to disease and death under 
which there had been such long inward groaning; 
and that Nature was waiting with eager expecta- 
tion to receive its share of this felicity. Whether 
by "nature" he described the animal creation, 
or the animal and vegetable creation both, or 
more, he opens up a vast field here, and wonder- 
fully enlarges our view of Christ's saving pur- 
poses. 

But enlarging the field and multiplying the 
difficulties to the utmost possible limit only served 



334 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

to exalt Paul's Savior in the thoughts of his 
bond-slave. He knew that his Lord would not 
fail nor be discouraged till all his work was done. 
Accordingly, his final word on the subject, writ- 
ten as late as the year 68 probably, and found in 
second Timothy says of our Lord — 

"He has made an end of death, and has brought 
life and immortality to light" (2nd Tim. 1 :10) ; 
from which we can see that the departing apostle 
had lost sight of the steps and processes by 
means of which the goal had to be reached, and 
stood in the very presence of the consummation 
itself, with his whole personality bathed in its 
surpassing glory. But the steps were there still, 
and it is in order for us now to review them care- 
fully. 

Our next duty, then, is that of getting before 
our minds in definite shape the various facts con- 
nected with the resurrection, which our present 
study of the scriptures has brought to our atten- 
tion. It will be remembered that we started out 
by stating that the resurrection, considered by 
itself, was a post mortem deliverance of the human 
body from the power of disease and death. We 
then found that the New Testament writers very 
soon saw that to make this deliverance permanent, 
there must necessarily be associated with it a re- 
placing of our coarse clay with some substance 
out of which a body imperishable and spiritual 
could be built up. They learned at the same time 
to associate with this resurrectional change in the 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 335 

bodies of the dead, a corresponding change in 
the bodies of those believers in Christ who would 
be alive in the flesh when the resurrection 
of the dead took place. This is made clear 
by what we call Paul's first letter to the 
Corinthians, which was written in the year 
57. In his next letter to this same people he 
shows us that he had come to entertain an even 
larger expectation and hope. It had been given 
him to see that a time would speedily come, when 
the change in which he believed would involve for 
the living child of God, the putting on or build- 
ing up of the imperishable spiritual body "over" 
the body of flesh and blood; and that at some 
time in the developing history of the race's re- 
demption this spiritual body would absorb or 
entirely replace the body of flesh and blood, and 
so do away with death altogether, swallowing it 
up in victory. He declared to the Romans 
about the same time that, not only God's children 
but nature also was groaning for introduction to 
this final "freedom from enslavement to corrup- 
tion," this "redemption of our bodies." And when 
he wrote his last letter to Timothy, his one refer- 
ence to the matter as we have just seen, is that in 
which writing of the "appearance of our Savior 
Christ Jesus," he asserts that "He has made an 
end of death, and has brought life and immor- 
tality to light by means of the Good News." 

Now all this teaching is very clear, but how 
shall we bring it into touch with the facts of his- 



336 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

tory and of life about us? Certainly the last 
enemy has not yet been wholly destroyed. The 
words of the letter to the Hebrews touching our 
Lord's triumphs is still applicable. He is reign- 
ing and judging and punishing and rewarding: 

"As yet, however, we do not see everything 
placed under man. What our eyes do see is 
Jesus, who was made for a while lower than 
angels, now because of his sufferings and death, 
crowned with glory and honor ; so that his tasting 
the bitterness of death should, in God's loving 
kindness, be on behalf of all mankind. It was in- 
deed, fitting that God for whom and through 
whom all things exist, should when leading many 
sons to glory, make the author of their salvation 
perfect through suffering. For he who purifies, 
and those whom he purifies all spring from One ; 
and therefore he is not ashamed to call them 
'Brothers.' " He says — 

"I will tell of thy name to my Brothers, 

"In the midst of the congregation I will sing 
thy praise," and again : 

"As for me I will put my trust in God." 
And yet again : — 

"See here am I and the children whom God 
gave me." 

"Therefore, since human nature is the common 
heritage of 'the Children' Jesus also shared it in 
order that by his death he might render power- 
less him whose power lies in death — that is, the 
Devil — and so might deliver all those who, from 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 337 

fear of death, had all their lives been living in 
slavery." (Heb. 2:8-15.) 

Such was the apostolic church's faith in Christ. 
They believed that he had become a man in order 
that by dying himself he might abolish death and 
render the Devil, as author of death, powerless 
upon this planet. But they saw what we still 
see to-day, namely, that up to the present this 
mighty undertaking of his has been only partially 
accomplished. How far has the work gone? 
Anything like a definite twentieth century answer 
is perhaps impossible, just as it is impossible for 
us to fix the date at which death will be finally 
chased from our planet, along with him whose 
power lies in it. But if we believe on the testi- 
mony of these scriptures, that this latter time will 
certainly arrive, we must also accept their mes- 
sage regarding the steps which they reveal as 
preparatory to it. They are our sole source of 
information. 

We may prepare the way for what still remains 
to be stated by a word, which will perhaps prove 
as startling as it is self-evident. If the resurrec- 
tion still remained to take place and were to 
occur to-day, we would not necessarily know any- 
thing about it. Our bodily ears were not con- 
structed to catch the notes of spiritual trumpets, 
the voices of archangels, or the shout of spiritual 
hosts ; nor our bodily eyes to see that which is 
not matter. We can hear physical sounds them- 
selves only within a certain range and volume. 



A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

All the rest are lost upon us. We cannot see 
the ether though it is all pervasive, nor even the 
particles of water which moisten the air about 
us. The military guard never reported that they 
saw our Lord leave Joseph's tomb. His body was 
visible to his disciples only when he made it so. 
That history has no record of the resurrection 
foretold and described by Paul is, therefore, no 
proof that it did not occur when he said it would, 
that is to say, within the life-time of the majority 
of those to whom he wrote, and in connection with 
that coming in judgment of our Lord, which he 
himself continually affirmed would take place be- 
fore the generation which He addressed had 
wholly passed' away. The alternative to believing 
that it occurred then, is that we shall assert that 
Paul made a mistake in the matter, which he 
never really saw or confessed; and this is to im- 
pugn the accuracy, on a very important point, 
of the one inspired writer to whom we owe al- 
most all the particular information which we 
have received upon the subject. His word in 
second Thessalonians, second chapter, was writ- 
ten to correct a possible, if not actual, mistake 
on their part and not on his. He hints that they 
were in danger of being deceived by men who 
might not stop even at forgery in their attempts 
to figure as teachers. But he nowhere says that 
he himself was mistaken when he gave them to 
understand that the day was comparatively near. 
On the contrary he supplied them with two land- 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 

marks by which they might judge of its distance 
in time, one of which at least could not have done 
otherwise than convince them further of its 
nearness. 

Whether Farrar and others have been correct 
or not in teaching that "the Man of Sin" or "In- 
carnation of Wickedness" was Nero, or the deified 
Julii, with Nero as their crown of blasphemy, 
there seems to be no real room for doubt that "the 
Great Apostasy," cited here and elsewhere in the 
New Testament, was the one prophesied by our 
Lord himself. Among various other signs of his 
coming and of the close of the age Jesus had given 
this one: — 

"And then many will fall away, and will betray 
one another, and hate one another. Many false 
prophets also will appear and lead many astray, 
and owing to the increase of wickedness the love 
of most will grow cold. ... I tell you even 
the present generation will not pass away, till 
all these things have taken place. The heavens 
and the earth will pass away, but my words shall 
never pass away." (Matt. 24:10-12, 34, 35.) 

The thing Paul was teaching these Thessalon- 
ians was that the resurrection which was to take 
place at the coming of the Lord, would not occur 
before "the Great Apostasy" which the Lord had 
declared would precede it; though Jesus himself 
had also foretold that the Apostasy, as well as 
the Coming, would happen within the life-time 
of the generation to which he was uttering his 



340 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

prophecies. They would have to wait for all the 
events in the order in which the Lord had placed 
them in his predictions. 

Now unless we can afford to set ourselves up 
as wiser than Paul himself, to whom we owe about 
all we possess regarding the nature and time of 
the resurrection, we must believe that it occurred 
in connection with that coming of our Lord. But 
if it did take place then, the statement that "the 
resurrection is past already," ceased to be a heresy 
only a short time after that statement was first 
written. And this ought to seem to us perfectly 
natural, for as we have already observed, it was 
the very nearness of the event which led some to 
believe and teach that it had already happened. 
Ever since that time the real heresy has been the 
denial that the resurrection of God's children took 
place as predicted by the New Testament writers. 

But if the resurrection took place so long ago 
as the year 68 or 70 of our era, what of those who 
have died in the Lord since? it will be asked. 
Paul has furnished us with a full answer. When 
their "tents" of flesh and blood were taken down 
they were not found without bodies, for they had 
already put on their imperishable spiritual bodies, 
while they were still using the others. And this 
work or "change" is wrought in each possessor of 
the new life in Christ. As to the precise sub- 
stance out of which these "celestial" bodies are 
built up, the scripture gives us no information. 
But the author of "The Evolution of Immortal- 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 341 

ity" has indulged in some very suggestive con- 
jectures touching the subject, which it may be 
well for me to quote: 

"The most remarkable feat which modern 
science has accomplished has been to establish the 
existence of that strange substance known as the 
luminiferous or instellar ether, the medium 
through which the 'X Ray' and wireless teleg- 
raphy perform their work. Its existence has 
long been suspected — now it is known. Sir Isaac 
Newton closes his 'Principia' with this prophetic 
paragraph : 

" 'And now we might add something concerning 
a most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all 
gross bodies; by the force and action of which spirit 
the particles of bodies mutually attract one another 
at near distances and cohere if contiguous; and elec- 
tric bodies separate, and light is emitted, reflected 
and heats bodies ; and all sensation is excited, and the 
members of animal bodies move at the command of 
the will, namely by vibrations of this spirit mutually 
propagative along the solid filaments of the nerves 
from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and 
from the brain to the muscles. But these things can- 
not be explained in a few words, nor are we furnished 
with that sufficiency of experiments which is neces- 
sary to an accurate determination and demonstration 
of the laws by which this elastic spirit operates.' 

"Now this 'subtle spirit' of Sir Isaac has been 
shown to be not spirit at all but a material medium 
which fills all space and interpenetrates all that 



342 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

we call matter. The 'sufficiency of experiments' 
which Newton lacked have been made by Struve, 
Helmholtz, Lord Kelvin, Dolbear, Teslar, Ront- 
g-en' and a hundred other mathematicians and phy- 
sicists. The result has been to compel a new 
definition of matter. Extension, ponderability, 
form, dimensions, and such qualities can no longer 
be thought sufficient to define matter. 'Empty' 
space can no longer be spoken of, for no portion 
of space is empty. It can no longer be said that 
'no two portions of matter can occupy the same 
space at the same time,' for they do so constantly. 
Indeed, it seems to be a very condition of the ex- 
istence of matter which we see that it should lie 
bathed in a matter which we do not see. For the 
universal ether is matter. As Lord Kelvin has 
demonstrated it shows in some ways the phe- 
nomena of a highly tenuous fluid, in others that 
of an infinitely dense solid, and in still others the 
properties of a jelly. It is the medium through 
which light moves by waves of an ascertained 
length, electric energy by waves of a different 
length, heat by still a third, and the energy which 
we call gravitation by some means not yet ascer- 
tained. It has been weighed and measured. A 
sphere of it the size of the earth would, if com- 
pressed to the density of the earth, be in size 
somewhere between a marble and an orange. It 
is the medium in the opaque flesh through which 
the invisible rays of light pass to form an X ray 
photograph. Its waves flow through so dense 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 343 



a mass of matter as a block of glass, as water 
flows through a sieve. It is the medium in which 
the elemental energies of heat, light, electricity 
and possibly chemical energy do their work. 
May not vital energy be concerned with it as 
well? 

"I venture to say in parenthesis that it is not 
easy to understand why the physicists are so re- 
luctant to admit the existence of such an objec- 
tive fact as 'Vital energy.' Surely there are 
abundant phenomena which cannot be forced to 
come under any other form of energy known. 
Suppose the phrase is but a name for a set of 
phenomena whose essential nature is not under- 
stood, that much may be said of all the other 
categories of energy. 

"It is now more than twenty years since two 
distinguished English men of science, Professors 
Balfour Stewart and P. G. Tait, put forth 
hesitatingly a theory of a physical basis of a 
future life. Starting from the evident double 
truth that all physical activity is associated 
with molecular activity in the matter of 
the brain and nerves, while at the same time 
physical and psychical phenomena are evidently 
different things, they suggest that there may well 
be a tertium quid, a third something, which serves 
as a nexus between them, and that ethereal mat- 
ter may be such a thing. 

"Each thought we think, each emotion we feel, 
is accompanied by certain molecular movements 



344 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and rearrangements in the brain. The psychical 
activity actually builds up a physical fabric for 
itself. But the material fabric is every moment 
disintegrating, and at death falls into ruin. 
Now suppose that before that ruin befals, the 
soul shall have been able to build up, as it were, 
a brain within a brain, a body within a body, 
something like that which the Orientals have for 
ages spoken of as the 'Astral Body.' Then 
when the body of flesh shall crumble away, there 
would be left a body, material to be sure, but com- 
pacted of a kind of matter which behaves quite 
differently from that which our sense perceptions 
deal with. It is a material which, so far as 
science has anything to say, is essentially inde- 
structible. It moves freely amongst and through 
ordinary matter without let or hindrance. It is 
not difficult at any rate to form a picture of a 
life based upon its organization. From the in- 
dividual spirits of just men made perfect, this 
present 'muddy vesture of decay' has dropped 
away, leaving them 'not unclothed but clothed 
upon.' They are still men. They have rational 
souls with material bodies fit to sustain and to ex- 
press their psychical life. The matter of their 
bodies is obedient to the laws of matter and life, 
but to the laws of that hind of life and matter. 
'There are celestial bodies and bodies terres- 
trial,' and each has its own mode of action. 
Such ethereal bodies compacted with living 
souls would of necessity inhabit a universe of their 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 345 

own, even though that universe should occupy the 
same space that this one does. Neither earth, 
nor fire, nor water could in the least impede their 
movement. In frost and flame they would be 
equally at home. With the swiftness of light or 
gravitation they could speed from where old 
Bootes leads his leash to where Sagittarius draws 
his bow in the South. With bodies of such firm 
stuff compounded, and so plastic to the uses of the 
Spirit, their knowledge would expand until na- 
ture's secrets should lie open to their eyes." 

As already indicated, all this is extremely sug- 
gestive as well as instructive. But it is doubtful 
if this idea of an "Ethereal" body quite coincides 
w r ith Paul's idea of an imperishable spiritual one. 
However, in this region one cannot speak with 
certainty. And happily we do not need to know 
either the how or the why of some of the divine 
operations. 

But Paul's vision of the wonders of this 
"change" reveals a crowning glory. All along 
the Christian ages the body of flesh and blood has 
been the cause of much groaning because it has 
been the victim of disease and death. The 
apostle, however, discloses a larger hope. The 
body, too, is to be redeemed in the case of God's 
sons, and nature is to have its share in that 
felicity. Then there will no longer be any "en- 
slavement to decay" but "all that is mortal will be 
absorbed in life" ; and health, energy, activity and 
enjoyment will be the lot of the body of flesh and 



346 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

blood, until it is "absorbed" by the spiritual body, 
which will be "over" it, covering and interpene- 
trating it ; and nature also will at last have come 
fully under the reign of life. 

To what age will God's children in that coming 
time attain before this absorption of their mortal 
bodies will free them for full entrance upon the 
larger possibilities which naturally belong to 
bodies celestial? Who shall say? All we can do 
now is to wonder and adore in the presence of our 
God who has made his Son such an uttermost de- 
liverer from death. 

The resurrection of the wicked does not come 
within the scope of our theme and has, therefore, 
not been touched upon. That there is to be such 
a resurrection is more than once affirmed in the 
Scriptures, and among others by our Lord Him- 
self. The distinction between it and that of 
God's children is probably the one which is so 
definitely drawn in Revelation 20:4-6. But it 
is not for us to deal with it now. 

There is, however, one more word of Paul's 
which claims our notice. It is that confession 
from the heart which we find in his letter to the 
Philippians — 

"Then indeed I shall know Christ, and the 
power of his resurrection, and all that it means 
to share his sufferings, in the hope that if I be- 
come like him in his death, I may possibly attain 
to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil. 3: 
10, 11.) 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 347 

Those commentators' have been on the true path 
of interpretation who have claimed that the 
resurrection which the apostle coveted was one of 
an unusual sort. If anyone could have considered 
himself assured of the resurrection which was 
to be the common experience of the vast body of 
believers, surely he could have done so. But he 
was not content simply to look forward to that. 
That he expected to die before the Coming of the 
Lord at the time he wrote this letter, is probably 
clear, though he anticipated release from prison 
and an opportunity of paying the Philippian 
church another visit. And his ambition was so to 
increase in the knowledge of Christ, during the 
intervening months or years, so to drink in the 
power of his resurrection, and so to share his 
sufferings, and then at the last, so to resemble 
him in his death, that he might be lifted com- 
pletely above the great body of imperfect be- 
lievers and be granted a resurrection, not like 
theirs, but like his Lord's. It was not a selfish 
wish, it was rather the opposite of that, for it 
meant unusual self-denial,, cross-bearing and serv- 
ice; and his straining of every nerve would not 
hinder any other believer, but would, on the con- 
trary, make him an example and inspiration for 
them all. 

But what was the difference between the two 
resurrections? The bodies of believers generally 
would undergo corruption. The Lord's did not, 
and Paul wished the same exemption from decay. 



348 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

At least one seems shut up to this very natural 
interpretation of his words, for no other appears 
possible. He had visions of the glorious pos- 
sibilities, or rather of the growing wealth of bless- 
ing which was wrapped up in Christ's resurrec- 
tion for the generations of men that were to suc- 
ceed each other after the Coming, and especially 
in the far future of the Church's maturity, and 
he longed to attain to all that was possible in his 
own early day. He seems to have concluded that 
he could not hope to escape death itself. It was 
too soon in the history of the Redeemer's work 
for that. But he did venture to indulge in the 
yearning desire that it might be with him as it 
had been with the Lord himself, who, though he 
could not avoid death, did wholly escape corrup- 
tion. To get the full sense of this declaration, 
therefore, we have but to add to it three words, 
thus : — "Then indeed I shall know Christ, and 
the power of his resurrection, and all that it 
means to share his sufferings, in the hope that 
if I become like him in his death, I may possibly 
attain to the resurrection from the dead," which 
was His. 

How strikingly this yearning ambition of 
Paul's harmonizes with all that teaching of his 
which we have been reviewing! And this chapter 
cannot close better than with these words of his 
to those same Philippians : 

"The State of which we are citizens is in 
Heaven ; and it is from Heaven we are eagerly 



JESUS THE DELIVERER 349 

looking for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
by the exercise of his power to bring everything 
into subjection to himself, will change this body 
that we have in our humiliation, until it is of the 
same nature as the body which he has in his 
glory." 1 (Phil. 3:20-21.) 

To Paul in his Roman prison, the coming or 
revelation of the Savior from Heaven as Judge 
was an eager expectation. To us in this twen- 
tieth century, it is an event long past, the blessed 
fruits of which are ours in part. And we know 
that nothing of all that was pledged in connec- 
tion with it will fail to arrive in its time. 

i This final clause and the one preceding it are from the 
tentative version of the T. C. N. T. 



XXI 

JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 

The apostles of Christ believed in rewards and 
punishments for the individual man under the 
reign of their Lord. They held also, and with 
equal tenacity, to the doctrine of a judgment for 
their own people as a nation, and for all the other 
peoples of the earth, under that same rule. 
They knew that it was to a people their Lord 
came at the time of his incarnation. 

"He came to his own — 

Yet his own did not receive him." 
This failure to receive him was fatal. Our Lord 
taught the Jews this, when, he told them the story 
of the tenants of a certain vineyard, who refused 
the owner his rightful share of the produce, beat 
or killed or stoned each servant he sent to demand 
it, and finally, when he sent his Son and heir, killed 
him also, in the hope that they would thus secure 
the vineyard for themselves ; adding — 

"And that, I tell you, is why the kingdom of 
God will be taken from you, and given to a nation 
that does produce the fruit of the Kingdom." 
He had already asked: "Have you never read in 
the scriptures — 

" 'The very stone which the builders despised 
350 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 351 

" 'Has' now itself become the corner stone ; 

" 'This corner stone has come from the Lord, 

" 'And is marvelous in our eyes?' 

"Yes, and he who falls on this stone will be 
dashed to pieces, while any one on whom it falls — ■ 
it will scatter him as dust." 

Our Lord's teaching regarding his disposal 
as judge, of all other peoples right down to the 
end of human history, was very explicit. That 
teaching we find in Matthew 25 :31 — 

"When the Son of Man has come in his glory 
and all the angels with him, then he 'will take his 
seat on his glory;' and all the nations will be 
gathered before him, and he will separate the 
people — just as a shepherd separates sheep from 
goats — placing the sheep on his right hand and 
the goats on his left. Then the king will say to 
those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by 
my Father, enter upon possession of the kingdom 
prepared for you ever since the beginning of the 
world. For when I was hungry, you gave me 
food ; when I was thirsty, you gave me drink ; 
when I was a stranger, you took me to your 
homes ; when I was naked, you clothed me ; when 
I fell ill, you visited me ; and when I was in prison, 
you came to me. ... I tell you, as often 
as you did it to one of these my brothers, however 
lowly, you did it to me.* " 

It is unnecessary to quote further from this 
illustrative story of our Lord, its language is 
so familiar. He was here teaching that the 



352 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

peoples that would receive him in the persons of 
his humblest followers, were the peoples that would 
rise, and flourish and continue ; while those 
peoples that rejected him in the persons of these 
followers of his, would simply perish from the 
earth. 

This interpretation is likely to be opposed as 
depriving us of what has so long been considered 
as our most vivid description of a final literal day 
of judgment. There is no need for arguing the 
matter here at any length. It will be sufficient 
merely to indicate two considerations which 
would seem to be decisive. 

In the first place, then, when men come before 
the bar of God as individuals, each must appear 
as belonging to one of two classes, whereas there 
are here three classes — those on the right hand, 
those on the left hand, and "these my brothers" ; 
and the first and second classes are each appointed 
to a destiny in view of its treatment of the third. 
In the second place, the standard applied is not 
one by means of which it can be judged whether 
or not a man or woman has received Christ spirit- 
ually. It was, however, the very test which was 
brought to bear upon the peoples of the earth, the 
moment the gospel began to be preached to them, 
"with the help of the Holy Spirit sent from 
heaven." The Jewish people went down under its 
application almost at once, and that in spite of 
the fact that they were the very people whom it 
was intended most to exalt. And one of the great 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 353 

outstanding facts of the Christian ages is that 
power and prosperity of every sort have come most 
largely to those peoples who have assisted the lowly 
brethren of Jesus to the greatest extent ; while 
those which have lacked in hospitality and generos- 
ity towards them have been forced to listen to the 
awful words of condemnation uttered against them 
by "the King." Look at Great Britain and the 
United States, and afterwards at Spain, for in- 
stance. Surely the King has set those peoples in 
two classes. Two he has placed on the right hand 
of his power, the other he has sent to his left. 
Two have heard, "Come, you who are blessed by 
nry Father, enter upon possession of the Kingdom 
prepared for you ever since the beginning of the 
world." The other has as surely heard the words, 
"Go from my presence, accursed, into the aeon- 
ian fire (the consuming fire of my disapproval) 
which has been prepared for the Devil and his 
angels." There can be no reasonable doubt, 
either, that their opposite treatment of Christ's 
brothers is the thing in view of which they have 
been rewarded and punished. 

In studying this whole subject from the apos- 
tolic standpoint, it may be said, first of all, that 
at the time of our Lord's ascension, two things 
remained to be accomplished. First, his king- 
dom had to be definitely inaugurated. That king- 
dom was to be primarily spiritual, and, as such, 
it was not yet properly established in the hearts 
of even his leading disciples, to say nothing of 



354 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

Judaism or the world as a whole ; but it was meant 
for all alike. In the second place, the deadly 
hostility to that kingdom which had crucified him, 
and was even then attempting to cover up the fact 
of his resurrection with a lie, had to be removed, 
through the conversion of these Jewish enemies 
to loyal subjects of his, or failing that, through 
their utter overthrow as an organized power. 
Pentecost witnessed the establishment of his king- 
dom in the hearts of the one hundred and twenty 
who were in the upper room waiting for the ful- 
fillment of his promise of the coming of the Holy 
Spirit, and that Kingdom's introduction through 
their testimony to thousands of other hearts. 
Then there followed the steady persistent effort 
to convert all opposers into supporters — an ef- 
fort which at one time seemed to those engaged 
in it far from hopeless ; for "God's message 
spread, and the number of the disciples continued 
to increase rapidly in Jerusalem, and a large body 
of the priests accepted the faith," 

In connection with this effort we have two very 
illuminating words. These were both spoken by 
Peter on the occasion of the healing! of the cripple 
"at the gate of the temple called 'the Beautiful 
Gate.' " For their proper understanding in our 
times the second should be read first. It is this — 

"You yourselves are the heirs of the prophets, 
and heirs, too, of the Covenant which God made 
with your ancestors, when he said to Abraham, 
'In your descendants will all the nations of the 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 355 

earth be blessed.' For you, first, God raised up 
his Servant, and sent him to bless you, by turning 
each one of you from his wicked ways." 

The words "raised up" here, mean caused to 
stand or established, and must almost of neces- 
sity be understood as describing that act of God, 
by means of which he brought back his Son from 
the dead "and exalted him to his right hand to be 
a Guide and a Savior, to give Israel repentance 
and forgiveness of sins." By his resurrection 
and by it alone was our Lord caused to stand im- 
movably as the chosen Servant of God. But for 
that his incarnation and whole earthly career 
would have proved fruitless. Upon this point 
Paul in particular insists most strongly. And 
it was this resurrection-vindicated Servant of God 
that Peter told the people had been sent with 
blessings for them. 

Here then is a second coming of our Lord. It 
was a coming in the Spirit for a specific object, 
namely, the Salvation, first of all, of the Jewish 
people. Does this sound strange? But how 
could he have fulfilled the promise made to his 
disciples, "I shall myself be always with you," 
without coming again and in a spiritual manner? 

Pentecost witnessed our Lord's second coming 
as a Spiritual Savior, according to Peter. 

But Peter has another word — 

"Therefore, repent and turn, that your sins 
may be wiped away; so that happier times may 
come from the Lord himself, and that he may 



356 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

send you, in Jesus, your long-appointed Christ. 
But heaven must be his home, until the days of 
the Universal Restoration, of which God has 
spoken by the lips of his holy prophets from the 
very first." Did Peter, then, think of Jesus as 
here, and, at the same time, as not here, but still 
to come ? Yes ; he regarded him as having been 
definitely revealed in his office of Savior from sin, 
and as still to be shown forth as restorer of the 
outward fortunes of his people. This is the order 
which has always been observed. Spiritual sal- 
vation first, then, as a sure result of the stead- 
fast, unalterable choice of Christ, material, so- 
cial, political salvation — sins wiped away and 
afterwards "happier times" for those who have 
experienced the cleansing and for all with whom 
they are vitally associated. We may, therefore, 
put Peter's word to his people thus — "You must 
first accept Jesus as your Savior from sin. He 
has already come again to you in that office; and 
until he has been received by you as such, he can- 
not come again as the restorer of your outward 
fortunes as a people." 

But Israel rejected this gospel of her deliver- 
ance, and when Jesus did come in his office of 
Universal Restorer at the very end of the Mosaic 
age, he was compelled in strictest accord with his 
own predictions, to send his angels to gather 
them from his kingdom because they were a hin- 
drance to men, and a people that could not be 
drawn from its life of sin. (Matt. 13:4*1.) And 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 357 

to-day it is only permitted us to ask with grieved 
hearts, what Israel's happier days, coming di- 
rect from the Lord, would have been for that 
people itself and the world at large, had she re- 
ceived Christ as her Savior from sin instead of 
rejecting him in all his offices. In the meantime 
our examination of Peter's gospel to the Jew has 
served to show us more clearly the nature of our 
Lord's second coming. It was his revelation in 
his different offices, and not some instantaneous 
spectacular display in the region of the bodily 
senses. 

There is one more word in "The Acts" to which 
attention may well be called here. It is the mes- 
sage which was delivered by ! the angels at the time 
of our Lord's ascension — 

"Men of Galilee, why are you standing here 
looking up into the heavens? This very Jesus, 
who has been taken from you into the heavens, 
will come in the very way in which you have seen 
him go into the heavens." (Acts 1:11.) In 
what manner, then, did he go into the heavens? 
Invisibly. "He was caught up before their eyes, 
and a cloud received him from their sight." 
(Acts 1:9.) This is the apostolic record. They 
could not, with their bodily eyes, see him go into 
the heavens. Neither were they, with their bodily 
ej^es, to see him return to the earth. Yet he was 
to come in power and great glory. There is a 
power and a glory concerning which our bodily 
eyes have brought us no information, but we are 



358 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

such confirmed materialists that we can scarcely 
believe it. Coming in clouds, or invisibly and 
spiritually, is ever the word that greets us. The 
exceptions are only seeming. And so, according 
to apostolic teaching, our Lord came again, and 
is here both as Savior and Judge. 

If it were worth while, we could bring forward 
here testimony from the Latin and Greek authors 
of the first century, including those of the New 
Testament, to show that all the events mentioned 
by our Lord as signs of his coming or revelation 
in his office of Judge, and of the end of the age 
in which he lived and labored and died and rose 
again, not excepting the preaching of his gospel 
"in all creation under heaven," came to pass as 
predicted by him. (Col. 1 :23, R. V.) It is suffi- 
cient for us to say that the world of Mosaism 
came to a very definite end with the destruction 
of its great city and temple, and the wholesale 
slaughter and carrying away into captivity of 
the Jewish people. Then the priesthood and the 
daily sacrifice went out no more to return. And 
why did they disappear? That he might come 
into full view who, "after he had offered one 
sacrifice for sins, which should serve for all time, 
'took his seat at the right hand of God.' " (Heb. 
10:12.) They disappeared because our Lord 
came then as Judge and removed them, as the 
writer of "Hebrews" said he would, on account 
of their unfitness to bear the test to which he was 
subjecting them. (Heb. 12:26, 27.) 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 359 

To define our Lord's second coming in agree- 
ment with apostolic teaching, we may say that 
it was his revelation to men, first as spiritual Sav- 
ior and then as Judge, within the life time of the 
generation that had seen him in the flesh. 

And here we may use the word inauguration in 
addition to the word revelation, and say that 
Jesus was publicly inaugurated as Savior, when 
on the day of Pentecost he was so gloriously 
heralded as such, that three thousand persons 
acknowledged him at once; and that his inau- 
guration as Judge, in connection with the over- 
throw of worn-out and corrupted Mosaism, is 
perhaps the most awe-inspiring event of history. 
The Savior was saving and the King was reign- 
ing and judging before Pentecost came, or the 
destruction of Jerusalem took place, but the fact 
was not made strikingly apparent before these 
events or inaugurations. Then, however, the 
greatness of the glorified Man of Nazareth, both 
as Savior and Royal Judge, was marvelously dis- 
closed. f 

He is still carrying on the work of both his 
offices. It is constantly the day of Salvation, 
and constantly, also, the day of judgment. 
Those peoples which receive him as Savior and 
King are by him appointed to careers of progress 
and growing power and prosperity; while those 
who do not so receive him, find themselves in the 
slippery places of disaster and ruin. And all 
this is just as he himself foretold it. Moreover, 



360 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

temporal salvation and temporal disaster or ruin 
are often to be seen in the same event. Every- 
thing depends upon the standpoint from which 
the event is viewed. The destruction of the Span- 
ish Armada was a disaster for Spain, but to the 
English it meant salvation. The destruction of 
Napoleon I, as Emperor of the French, was 
the deliverance of Europe; just as the defeat of 
the Saracens by Charles Martel in 732, and again 
in 738; and the overthrow of the Turks under 
the walls of Vienna, by John Sobieski in 1683, 
had been its salvation before. And each work of 
destruction and deliverance which abases the 
worse and exalts the better, is done in the further- 
ance of his will. 

In the overthrow of his foes and the deliverance 
of his own our Lord uses a variety of instruments, 
including armed men and the forces of nature. 
But the apostolic church saw that his greatest 
engine of destruction as well as of salvation, is 
his truth. Accordingly Paul wrote to the Thes- 
salonians — 

"Wickedness indeed is already at work in se- 
cret; but only until he who at present restrains 
it is removed out of the way. Then will 'Wick- 
edness Incarnate' appear, but the Lord Jesus will 
destroy him with the breath of his lips, and an- 
nihilate him with the splendor of his coming." 
(2nd Thess. 2:7, 8.) Probably Paul had the 
deification of the Roman emperors, and their 
growingly blasphemous claims to divine honors 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 361 

in mind when he wrote these words. But what- 
ever the thing or person may have been which 
he described as "Wickedness Incarnate/' there 
can be no doubt that, by the breath of our Lord's 
lips and the splendor of his coming, which were 
to destroy him, he meant his word, or the truth 
spoken by him, on the one hand, and standing 
inherent and resplendent in his character, on the 
other. 

This destroying might of the word of Christ 
was constantly present in the mind of John when 
he penned the book of "The Revelation." In 
describing his glorified Lord as he appeared to 
him on Patmos, he writes — 

"From his mouth came a sharp two-edged 
sword." (Rev. 1 :16.) The opening words to 
the angel of the church at Pergamus are — 
"These are the words of him who holds the sharp 
Wo-edged sword." (Rev. 2:12.) And the 
warning to the Nicolaitans of that Church was — 
"Repent, therefore, or else I will come quickly 
and contend with such men with words that will 
cut like a sword." (Rev. 2:16.) Exceedingly 
striking, too, from this standpoint, are some later 
words of this same book — 

"Then I saw that heaven lay open. There ap- 
pears a white horse ; its rider is called 'Faithful' 
and 'True'; righteously does he judge and make 
war. His eyes are flaming fires ; on his head 
are many diadems, and he bears a name, written, 
which no one knows but himself; he has been 



362 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood; and 
the name by which he is called is 'The Word of 
God.' The armies of heaven followed him, 
mounted on white horses and clothed in fine linen, 
white and pure. From his mouth comes a sharp 
sword with which Ho smite the nations; and he 
will rule them with an iron rod.' He 'treads the 
grapes in the press' of the maddening wine of the 
wrath of Almighty God; and on his robe and on 
his thigh he has the name written — 'king of 
kings and lord of lords/ Then I saw an angel 
standing on the sun. He cried in a loud voice 
to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven — 'Gather 
and come to the great feast of God, to eat the 
flesh of Kings, and the flesh of commanders, and 
the flesh of mighty men, and the fiesh of horses 
and their riders, and the flesh of all freemen and 
slaves, and of high and low.' 

"Then I saw the Beast and the Kings of the 
earth and their armies, gathered together to fight 
with him who sat on the horse and with his army. 
The Beast was captured, and with him was taken 
the false Prophet, who performed the marvels 
before the eyes of the Beast, with which he de- 
ceived those who had received the brand of the 
beast and those who worshiped his image. Alive, 
they were thrown, both of them, into the fiery 
lake 'of burning sulphur.' The rest were killed 
by the sword which came out of the mouth of him 
who rode upon the horse; and all the birds fed 
upon their flesh." (Rev. 19:11-21.) 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 363 

This is how John saw the events of the year 
of our Lord 68, or a few months later. The 
Great King was dealing with the nations. Jeru- 
salem was not yet destroyed, but the wrath 
which was to the uttermost was already being 
visited upon the Jewish people. And as John 
gazed upon the scene, the element of time was 
eliminated from his thoughts, and all the Christ 
rejecting nations of the coming years, with all 
their hideous tyrannies, their falsehoods and their 
blasphemies, as already so definitely represented 
by Rome herself, became one vast host, that had 
to be met and overcome by the armies of heaven, 
and their Commander-in-chief, the King of Kings 
and Lord of Lords. The battle was joined, and 
there was red carnage enough, no doubt. But 
it was not the slaughter of any physical battle- 
field that impressed John. He saw greater tri- 
umphs than have ever been won thus. He saw 
the very spiriit of tyranny and the very spirit of 
lying error, borne down, taken as prisoners and 
"thrown alive, both of them, into the fiery lake 
of burning sulphur." And the only slaughter 
that he describes was done "by the sword which 
came out of the mouth of him who rode upon 
the horse"; that is, by our Lord Jesus Christ as 
"The Truth." 

And all this is quite in agreement with things 
as we know them. War serves a purpose. It 
often tests the quality of the men whom it brings 
face to face in deadly conflict, in such a way as 



364 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

to make it clear which sort of spiritual nurture 
produces the sturdiest manhood. It turned 
Cromwell and his Ironsides into standing proofs 
for all time, of the fact that conscious personal 
intercourse with God, without the intervention 
of any priest, makes men invincible against sol- 
diers of every other type. And the recent Span- 
ish-American war served to show that liberty, 
learning and an open Bible are apt to produce 
better navies, than are priesthoods that frown upon 
all three. Above all, war 1 emphasizes the fact that 
men are essentially noble, because they are 
capable of such devotion to a cause as to look 
upon their property and their bodily lives, only 
as things that can be staked and, if need be, lost 
in its interests. There can be no doubt, either, 
that some good things have been reached and 
some evils abated by means of the bloody strug- 
gles of the past. Yet no one would think for one 
moment of righting every human wrong, much 
less of attaining to every human excellence and 
good, by means of the sword. 

War inflicts many wrongs always, and that 
often without actually removing one. And where 
it comes as a real cure for some great ill, it is 
only a little less frightful than the malady it- 
self. The sword of truth alone, as it comes from 
Christ's mouth to smite iniquity and falsehood, 
wages war without doing real harm to any. 
What John saw was that the King of Kings and 
Lord of Lords can inflict wrong upon none. He 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 365 

knew that when he was here in the flesh, he re- 
jected the physical conquest of the nations as a 
temptation of the Devil. And probably the true 
doctrine is that he has employed human wars in 
the interests of his truth at any time, only as he 
used for the furtherance of his aims, the malice 
of the Jewish rulers, the treachery of Judas and 
the sinful weakness of Pilate, which brought 
about his crucifixion on Calvary. He is far be- 
yond our power of comprehending his greatness, 
and he can triumph even by means of his cruci- 
fixion. We may take it for granted that phy- 
sical wars will wholly cease, and come to be re- 
garded as one of the frightful features of a past 
barbarism, long before all the wrongs of our 
earth are righted. Might can never make right 
and, as James has assured us, "Anger in man does 
not produce the righteousness required by God." 

It was because John had a vision of the things 
our Lord was really to bring about, that he gave 
to the church these pictures. Even now the Par- 
liament, the court, the school, and perhaps, above 
all, the pulpit which proclaims truth and right- 
eousness as the richest gifts God has to bestow 
upon men, are doing nearly all that is being ac- 
complished, outside the family, towards human 
deliverance, uplifting and enjoyment. And John 
tells us in the twentieth chapter of his Revelation 
the story of his king's victories up to the very 
last of them. 

Everything he saw here was in the region of 



366 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

spiritual forces and facts. "Then I saw an angel 
coming down from heaven, with the key of the 
bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He 
seized the dragon, the primeval serpent (who is 
the 'Devil' or 'Satan') and bound him in chains 
for a thousand years. He flung him into the 
bottomless pit and locked it, and set his seal upon 
it ; that he should not deceive the nations any more 
until the thousand years are ended. After that 
he must be let loose for a while. 

"Then I saw thrones, and to those who took 
their seats upon them authority was given to act 
as judges. And I saw the souls of those who 
had been beheaded because of the testimony to 
Jesus and because of the message of God, for 
they had refused to worship the beast or its image 
and had not received the brand on their foreheads 
and on their hands. They were restored to life, 
and they reigned with the Christ a thousand 
years." ! 

For our present purpose we need not pretend 
to know precisely what this restoration to life 
stood for in the mind of John, nor need we ven- 
ture a guess as to the exact time of the begin- 
ning or end of the period here set forth as a 
thousand years ; but the vision conveys to us at 
least the message that our Lord's conquest was 
to be signal, and that those who had been serv- 
ing him best in the struggle, would live again in 
the triumph of the truth for which they had laid 
down their lives. 



JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 367 

But the kinetoscope continues to throw its mov- 
ing pictures upon the screen before John's eyes. 
He sees the thousand years ended, and Satan at 
liberty once more, and deceiving "the nations that 
live in 'the four corners of the earth — Gog and 
Magog.' He will come to gather them together 
for battle ; and their number will be as great as 
the sand upon the sea-shore. They went up over 
the breadth of the whole earth, and surrounded 
the camp of Christ's people and the beloved city. 
Then -fire fell from the heavens and consumed 
them; and the devil, their deceiver, was hurled into 
the lake of fire and sulphur, where the Beast and 
the false prophet already were, and they will be 
tortured day and night forever." (Rev. 20.) 

This whole vision belongs to the world of 
thought and spiritual reality. The fire from 
heaven is the truth of God all aflame and con- 
suming every false thing that it touches, till the 
Father of Lies finds himself in his retreat before 
it, hurled forever from the world of men that he 
has no longer any power to deceive. The con- 
quests of Christ are those of truth and holiness, 
and they are in the New Testament represented as 
continuing till the last vestiges of error and moral 
pollution have been chased from our earth. 

We must remember, however, that all this is 
but the negative side of the saving work of our 
Lord. He is the great expeller and demolisher 
of evil, but he is much more besides. He is the 
great builder and restorer. He roots out and 



368 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

burns up the thorns and briers of the wilderness, 
tHat he may plant the cedar, the pine, the box, 
and the myrtle. He sends his streams of refresh- 
ing into the desert places where nothing would 
grow, that they may rejoice and blossom as the 
rose. He pulls down the strongholds of evil that 
he may build in their places the impregnable 
fortresses of righteousness. He shakes the old 
earth and heaven to pieces, that a heaven and 
earth that cannot be shaken may appear in their 
stead, and abide to his eternal glory and praise. 



XXII 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 

The wish of those Greek visitors to Jerusalem 
to see Jesus is still what it was at the time of 
Philip and Andrew, an event of striking signifi- 
cance. But more striking and significant jet are 
the things which Jesus said on that occasion, and 
particularly the word he spoke last. 

"Now this world is on its trial. Now the 
spirit that is ruling 1 this world shall be driven out ; 
and I, when I am lifted up from the earth shall 
draw all men to myself. By these words he indi- 
cated what death he was to die." (Jno. 1%: 
31, 32.) 

Could language be more arresting or more ex- 
plicit than this? Undoubtedly our Lord was here 
anticipating and foretelling the character and ex- 
tent of his conquests upon this earth. And so 
far was his cross from appearing to him an ob- 
stacle to be surmounted, which to some extent 
it really was at the start, that he boldly put it 
forward as his throne of universal judgment, on 
the one hand, and the instrument, by means of 
which, on the other hand, he would win the homage 
and fealty of the whole human family. The con- 
demnation and final expulsion from this world, 
369 



370 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

not only of sin, but also of the very principle 
or being who introduced it and has fostered it 
here, is one part of our Lord's work which these 
words describe. This work is destructive in its 
nature. But it is the pulling down of old plague- 
infested structures that a palace may be erected 
in their place, or the clearing and draining of the 
fever-breeding fen, that in its stead there may 
appear one after another smiling fields and pas- 
tures for flocks. The work of destruction is put 
first, because in the very nature of the case it must 
go first. But it is only a preparatory work after 
all. Our Lord's greatest work is constructive. 
The thing he is producing greatly surpasses the 
things he is destroying, and he will be magnified 
at last as the maker of new heavens and a new 
earth, and adored not so much for what he has 
saved our race from, as for what he has saved 
it to. It is on this account that we read in the 
fifth chapter of Revelation — 

"And when he had taken the book, the four 
Creatures and the twenty-four Councilors 
prostrated themselves before the Lamb, 
each of them holding a harp and golden 
bowls full of incense. (These are the prayers of 
Christ's People.) And they are singing a new 
song — 

" 'Thou art worthy to take the book and break 
its seals, for thou wast sacrificed, and with thy 
blood thou didst buy for God men of every tribe 
and language and people and nation, and didst 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 371 

make them a kingdom of Priests for our God and 
they are reigning* on the earth.' " 

The Old Testament prophets were granted 
visions of this far off yet coming glory. Micah 
wrote — 

"But in the latter da} r s it shall come to pass 
that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
established in the tops of the mountains, and it 
shall be exalted above the hills ; and peoples shall 
flow unto it. And many nations shall go and 
say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain 
of the Lord, and to the house of the God of 
Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and we 
will walk in his paths ; for out of Zion shall go 
forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jeru- 
salem. And he shall judge between great 
peoples, and shall decide concerning strong na- 
tions afar off: and they shall beat their swords 
into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning 
hooks ; nation shall not lift up sword against na- 
tion, neither shall they learn war any more. But 
they shall sit every man under his vine and his 
fig-tree ; and none shall make them afraid ; for 
the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it." 
(Micah 4:1-4.) 

The thing pictured here is no less than the 
universal reign, first in righteousness and after- 
wards in settled peace, of the God of Israel over 
the nations of mankind, both small and great. 

The splendors of this world-wide glory are con- 
tinually bursting upon us from the pages of the 



372 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

later Isaiah, in connection with his story of strug- 
gle and suffering and disappointed hopes and 
apparently unrequited toils — 

"But I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent 
my strength for nought, and in vain ; yet surely 
my judgment is with the Lord, and my recom- 
pense with my God. And now saith the Lord that 
formed thee from the womb to be his servant, 
. . . It is too light a thing that thou shouldest 
be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, 
and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also 
give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou 
mayest be my salvation to the end of the earth." 
(Isa. 49:4-6.) 

The suffering servant of the fifty-third chapter 
is bruised and grieved and slain and buried, but 
he is at the same time the victorious and prosper- 
ous one who sees his seed, prolongs his days, makes 
many righteous and is exalted to the heights of 
power. In connection with his administration a 
new day dawns for the people, God's promise of 
which is couched in such terms as these: 

"For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I 
will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for 
stones iron: and I will also make thy officers 
peace, and thy task-masters righteousness. 
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, des- 
olation nor destruction within thy borders ; but 
thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates 
praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by 
day; neither for brightness shall the moon give 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 373 

light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee 
an everlasting light and thy God thy glory. 
Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy 
moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine 
everlasting light and the days of thy mourning 
shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all right- 
eous, they shall inherit the land forever." (Isa. 
60:17-21.) 

To think of all this as just so much poetic 
hyperbole from the ancient East will scarcely do. 
Poetic it is and boldly figurative, and we can all 
agree with Peter that the prophets who wrote it 
could only keep "searching to find out what they 
could about the time to which the Spirit of Christ 
within them was pointing, when foretelling the 
sufferings which would befall Christ and the 
glories which would follow; but the things which 
it brings into view are things such as we see 
about and above us now in their earlier unfold- 
ings, and things which the coming generations 
of men will know in their fuller and fullest de- 
velopments. "For the new heavens and the new 
earth which I will make shall remain before me, 
saith the Lord." (Isa. 66:22.) 

Passing by the words of Amos, which were 
quoted before the Jerusalem Council, to show that 
the purpose of God was to build up a Christian 
Church which would be all-embracing; and Dan- 
iel's vision of the stone cut out of the mountain 
without hands, which continued rolling till it filled 
the whole earth, and thus represented or sym- 



374 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

bolized the kingdom which the Lord God was to 
set up and maintain forever; we may glance at a 
passage in second Peter which is suggested by the 
words quoted from the closing sentences in 
Isaiah — 

"The day of the Lord will come like a thief. 
And on that day the heavens will pass away with 
a crash, the elements will be burned up and dis- 
solved, and the earth and all that is in it will 
be disclosed. Now since all these things are in 
the process of dissolution, think what you your- 
selves ought to be, — what holy and pious lives 
you ought to lead, while you await and hasten the 
coming of the Day of God. At its coming the 
heavens will be dissolved in fire and the elements 
melted by heat, but we look for 'new heavens and 
a new earth,' where righteousness shall have its 
home, in fulfillment of the promise of God." 
(2nd Peter 3:10-13.) 

By "heavens" in this passage we understand 
the religious conditions, and by "earth" the social 
and political conditions of the time, near the year 
of our Lord 70, when it was written, particularly 
as these existed in connection with Judaism. Al- 
ready they were "in the process of dissolution" 
and the Christians scattered everywhere were 
"helping forward the coming of the Day of God" 
by preaching Christ to all nations as their com- 
ing King, — the Day of God which would end this 
"process" and bring these "heavens" and this 
"earth" to an end "with a crash," and with such 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 375 

a fire as would reduce the whole political and 
religious situation to its original elements, 
Peter's interest in this destructive process was in- 
tense, for he had the promise of his God in the 
last chapter of Isaiah that he would make out 
of the elements of the old heavens and old earth 
"new heavens and a new earth, where righteous- 
ness shall have its home." The "fire" of the 
passage is, of course, figurative fire. The thing 
which the passage describes is the breaking up 
and melting of the peoples of the earth, beginning 
with the Jews, preparatory to their being taken 
up, all of them, into the world-wide religious, 
social and political institutions of Christianity. 
The burning of Rome, which Peter perhaps wit- 
nessed, may have suggested the figure, or it may 
have come to him through his reading of the 
Old Testament prophets. It is interesting to 
note, as Farrar does, that a little later, both the 
temple of Capitoline Jupiter, in Rome, represent- 
ing the heathen heavens, and the temple at Jeru- 
salem, representing the heavens of the Jew, were 
burned to ashes to make room for the new. 

The Twenty-first chapter of Revelation pre- 
sents the case from the same standpoint. Going 
on through it and into the next, we find ourselves 
in the midst of imagery supplied by Isaiah and 
Ezekiel and used by them to describe a state of 
earthly blessedness which they foresaw. And 
when we look closely into John's words for his 
meaning, the only possible conclusion we can ar- 



376 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

rive at, consistent at once with literary principles 
and common sense, is that he is setting forth, not 
the glories of heaven itself, but the glories of 
those heavenly conditions which are to be estab- 
lished here through the descent of the divine into 
our human affairs. The things John saw were 
new heavens and a new earth — a new earth as 
well as new heavens. In other words he had a 
vision of new religious and social (including po- 
litical) conditions. And to keep us from mak- 
ing any mistake at this point, he goes on to say 
that he saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, com- 
ing down from God out of heaven, to be itself 
both the new heavens and the new earth; and he 
heard a great voice, not out of the New Jerusalem, 
but out of the same heaven from which the New 
Jerusalem itself was descending, saying with un- 
doubted reference to that city — 

"The tabernacle of God is set up among men." 
And when we have reached the close of John's 
description of the great four-square city, with 
its twelve gates of pearl that are never shut, we 
read — "The nations walk by the light of it ; and 
the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. 
And men will bring the glory and honor 
of the nations into it." 

The story is that of the coming of God 
through Christ into touch with us men and our 
affairs, and the glorious results which are even- 
tually to be brought about by means of that com- 
ing. The work being accomplished is heavenly 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 811 

and divine, but the scene is earthly and lies in 
the midst of our religious and social conditions. 

And so, losing sight now of Judaism, the frac- 
tion, and finding under our eyes, instead, the 
whole vast world of our humanity, the one true 
thing for us to say is this: "The former heav- 
ens and the former earth" are gradually passing 
away, and "the new heavens" and "the new earth" 
are gradually taking their places, and by and 
by the old heavens and earth will all be gone, and 
everything here will be new. Or, viewing the 
great transformation from the standpoint of 
John's figure of the New Jerusalem, the day is 
coming when all earth's peoples shall at length 
find themselves within its gates and living its life 
of full and glad obedience to the one great King 
of all. It is here upon the earth that such con- 
ditions are to be established as will forbid the en- 
trance of "any unhallowed thing," and of "those 
whose lives are shameful and false," and will bring 
it about that this planet will be peopled "only 
by those whose names have been written in the 
Lamb's Book of Life." 

It is in this very home of disease and death 
and weeping and mourning that God shall wipe 
away all tears. It is here that "there shall be 
no more death, nor will there be any more grief 
or crying or pain." 

And John's further description of this glori- 
ous city of his vision is in full harmony with 
this view — 



878 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

"And the angel showed me 'a river of the water 
of Life,' as clear as crystal issuing from the 
throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of 
the street of the city. On each side of the river 
was a tree of life which bore twelve kinds of 
fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the 
leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
nations. 'Everything that is accursed will cease 
to be.' The throne of God and of the Lamb will 
be within it, and his servants will worship him; 
they will see his face, and his name will be on 
their foreheads. Night will cease to be. They 
will have no heed of the light of a lamp, nor 
have they the light of the sun, for the 'Lord 
God will be their light, and they will reign for 
ever and ever.' " (Rev. 22:1-5.) 

Perfect obedience, unhindered vision of God, 
the full assurance of faith, complete spiritual il- 
lumination, and the abiding possession of all the 
fruits of the finished triumphs of all the redeem- 
ing years, — this is the final picture of John's 
painting. No wonder that after the vision of 
coming facts, which enabled him to do the paint- 
ing, had passed, the angel said to him: "Blessed 
will he be who lays to heart the words of the 
prophecy contained in this book," which you are 
writing, for it is at once the most glorious and 
most blessed prophecy that human lips can utter, 
or pen of man set down. 

This constructive work of our Lord, like the 
destructive, is the task and toil of the redeeming 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 379 

ages. Only as the wrong disappears can the 
right take its place. On the other hand, the 
right is always waiting for the wrong to make 
way for it. It is true, too, that as there is a 
gradual cleansing, enlightenment and upbuilding 
of the individual believer, so also is there of 
the church as a whole; for her progress to- 
wards maturity of creed and life is one of slow 
stages. 

This gradual development of the kingdom of 
God was set forth by our Lord himself on more 
than one occasion. "First the blade, then the ear 
and then the full grain in the ear," are words 
of his. So also are the parables of the mustard 
seed, and of the "yeast which a woman took and 
covered up in three pecks of flour, until the whole 
had risen." (Matt. 13:33.) Paul, too, had it 
definitely in mind when, writing to the Ephesians, 
he said — 

"He who went down is the same as he who went 
up — up beyond the highest heaven, that he might 
fill all things with his presence. And he it is 
who gave to the Church apostles, prophets, mis- 
sionaries, pastors and teachers to fit his people 
for the work of the ministry, for the building up 
of the body of the Christ. And this shall con- 
tinue, until we all attain to that unity which is 
given by faith and by a fuller knowledge of the 
Son of God; until we reach the ideal man — the 
full standard of the perfection of the Christ. 
Then we shall no longer be like infants, tossed 



S80 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

backwards and forwards, blown about by every 
breath of human teaching, through the trickery 
and craftiness of men, towards the snares of 
error; but holding the truth in a spirit of love, 
we shall grow into complete union with him who 
is our head— Christ Himself." (Eph. 4:10-15.) 

How definite this prophecy is, and how long 
the vista down which it looks so bravely ! How 
very much, too, still remains to be effected before 
its finished fulfillment can be announced! But is 
not onej of the blessed movements of our own times 
directed towards the healing of the divisions 
which have all along existed among Christians, 
and the attainment of "that unity which is given 
by faith and a fuller knowledge of the Son of 
God." And have we not in this the pledge that 
the whole church will eventually be built into one 
grand body, "and reach the ideal man — the full 
standard of the perfection of the Christ." 

If we really need any further assurances of 
prophecy, Paul himself gives them to us in this 
same letter — 

"The Christ loved the Church, and gave him- 
self for her, to make* her holy, after purifying her 
by the Washing with the Water, according to 
his promise; so that he might himself bring the 
Church, in all her beauty, into his own presence, 
with no spot or wrinkle or blemish of any kind, 
but that she might be holy and faultless." (Eph. 
5:26,27.) 

Paul was like John. He had the vision of a 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 381 

Church perfected and rendered faultless by her 
Savior here upon the earth. j 

Associated most closely with this idea of the 
Church's perfection is that of her universality. 
And our study of the New Testament regarding 
the utter extinction of evil-doers, and the final 
banishment of Satan himself from the earth, has 
already made this universality a necessity of 
thought for us. When all the enemies of "the 
camp of Christ's people and the beloved city" 
have been either consumed or banished, the Church 
must in the very nature of things find herself in 
full possession. Consequently Paul has furnished 
us with a picture of things as they will appear 
when the redemption of our race is at length an 
accomplished fact. The picture is not complete, 
but it portrays a scene which is to characterize 
our Lord's final, as distinguished from his second 
coming — his coming at the close of the Chris- 
tian age as distinguished from that coming of 
his at the close of the Mosaic era, to which we 
have already given attention. 

The resurrection of those who were his has 
taken place. God has at long last, as we would 
say, put all his enemies under his feet, including 
the last enemy, death. "And, when everything 
has been placed under him, the Son will place him- 
self under God who placed everything under him, 
that God may be all in all." 

The scene which this picture represents is one 
of such infinite dimensions that we cannot hope to 



882 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

take it all in, but this much at least may be 
clearly made out. Christ became man for the 
special work of bringing our race back to God, 
and when that work is fully done, he will in his 
humanity retire from view and leave the race 
to enjoy God as pure spirit, apart from every 
thought of his human mediation, excepting as 
that mediation must be forever held in the ador- 
ing memory of all those who shall have called 
him Savior. 

Let us again ask what the two pictures were 
which the Holy Spirit hung in the gallery of 
Paul's sanctified intellect and imagination, to 
represent the earthly condition of our race as 
redeemed, and which he in turn hung in the gal- 
lery of New Testament literature for the grate- 
ful believing study of all the generations that were 
to succeed him. We may first look at them sep- 
arately, and afterwards in combination. 

Here is the first. Christ having done his whole 
work hands over the kingdom of mankind to God, 
who becomes "all in all," — Lawgiver, Teacher, 
Satisfier of every need of his children. I 

And here is the second. Let us examine it 
carefully. It is not a picture of man freed from 
his association with nature, or nature freed from 
its association with man, because that associa- 
tion could never be made mutually helpful to them 
in the highest way. On the contrary, this picture 
is that of nature rejoicing in the presence of man, 
and man rejoicing in the presence of nature, be- 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 383 

cause they have together been delivered from the 
very last consequences of sin, including their long 
"enslavement to decay," and been placed, each of 
them, upon the highway leading to its own true 
goal. 

And what do these two pictures, placed side by 
side, show us? Man at home in the bosom of God, 
and, at the same time, at home in a blissful and 
blissgiving headship of nature, is their splendid 
revelation. Man was made for God, and nature 
was made for man, and when Christ's redeeming 
work is done, both God and man will be found 
gloriously possessed of their full rights. 

In fine, the divinely inspired apostles who dealt 
with this theme, regarded the full development 
and manifestation of God's children as the 

— " . . one far off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

To their minds the race when fully redeemed, 
was not to be represented so much by those who 
were soon to be raised from the dead and in- 
troduced to the full glories of heaven, as by those 
who were to have their home here, and were even- 
tually to be lifted above the power of sin, and 
disease and death ; every man, woman and child 
of them thereafter walking with God perfectly, 
and each in turn passing through that experience, 
corresponding to the resurrection which Paul de- 
scribed by the word "change." 

This final age of human history will be that 



384 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

of the divine Father and his children, and will 
endure, like those which preceded it, throughout 
the whole period assigned from the beginning by 
the wisdom and will of the loving Father Himself. 

In bringing this chapter to a close we may re- 
mark that we are still living in the presence of 
the Judge of all the nations and the Savior of 
all men, who with his human lips proclaimed — 

"Now this world is on its trial. Now the spirit 
that is ruling this world shall be driven out; and 
I, when I am lifted up from the earth, shall draw 
all men to myself." 

We are in his presence who taught his followers 
that the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple 
would be the token that he had entered into human 
affairs, to remove every hindrance to the right 
worship of God, and the highest service men owe 
to each other. 

We find ourselves here again after such an ex- 
amination of the scriptures as makes it easier for 
us to understand the holy joy with which this awful 
catastrophe was hailed by the very choicest saints 
of human history, up to that time at least. They 
rejoiced because it was given them to see that the 
casting away of impenitent Israel was the recon- 
ciling of the world ; that the shaking to pieces of 
the old faulty heavens and earth was to make 
room for a new heaven and a new earth! that noth- 
ing could shatter ; or that the breaking up and 
melting of the old heavens and earth was for 
the purpose of having the resultant liquid mass 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 385 

crystalized into "new heavens and a new earth, 
where righteouness shall have its home." They 
rejoiced, in short, because they were divinely as- 
sured that the utter breaking up of the Jewish 
people as opposers of Christ, would be a very dis- 
tinct clearing of the ground for our Lord's great 
work of redeeming the race. And they rejoiced 
greatly because they saw that this redemption 
would be complete, that the race would in reality, 
as well as in the divine purpose, be bought back 
from all its sins and sufferings, and raised to 
all the heights of holiness and happiness possible 
here upon the earth. 

They saw that before the work was accom- 
plished, every foe of goodness, including the 
"primeval Serpent" himself, would be finally ban- 
ished from our earth, thus leaving "Christ's Peo- 
ple" in sole possession. They saw Christ's people 
themselves led up to "that unity which is given 
by faith and by a fuller knowledge of the Son 
of God, and the perfection of manhood and that 
degree of development of which the ideal to be 
found in Christ is the standard." In other words, 
they saw Christ "bring the Church, in all her 
beauty, into his own presence with no spot or 
wrinkle or blemish of any kind, but that she 
might be holy and faultless." 

When they viewed mankind in the fullness of 
the new Life, they saw the "holy city" and the 
Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, as its 
temple and its illuminators. And as they gazed 



386 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

they saw the nations walk by the light of it, and the 
kings of the earth bring their glory into it, accom- 
panied by the glory and honor of the nations 
themselves. And as they looked forward with 
the individual and social life of the race in mind, 
they exclaimed — 

"There will be no more death, neither will there 
be any more grief or crying or pain. The old 
order has passed away." 

And they knew that this very planet, on which 
the first Adam fell and the second Adam tri- 
umphed, was to be the scene of all this glorious 
transformation. 

Did they believe that all they described would 
be literally brought about? We may at least 
be sure that they believed in Eden, and its sinless 
unsuffering condition, and in Christ as the tri- 
umphant Savior, who would make all as well with 
the race here, as it would have been if Adam had 
not fallen at the first. What that is painful 
would the race unf alien have escaped? From all 
that they believed it would be completely rescued. 
What that is holy and high would it have at- 
tained here? Into all that they believed their 
Lord would fully save it. 

Does this seem impossible? The true answer 
is that God's long processes have never yet mis- 
carried in their execution. Peter declared that 
to the Lord a thousand years are like one day. 
This being so we may consider ourselves, from 
the apostolic point of view, as only near the close 



JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 387 

of the second day of his year of grace. And he 
has accomplished much already. What then may 
he not effect in the remaining three hundred and 
sixty-three days of that year? 



XXIII 
CONCLUSION 

We have now reviewed the Christian scheme of 
redemption as it unfolded itself before the apos- 
tolic mind. From beginning to end it is an 
eschatology — a science of the last things. These 
apostolic Christians had witnessed and were wit- 
nessing the inauguration of the final instrumen- 
talities and processes connected with the divine 
redemption of our race. The patriarchal dis- 
pensation had given way to the ethnic religions, 
and these were now to be gloriously fulfilled in a 
religion as wide as mankind and great and per- 
fect like the heart of God himself. 

The instrumentalities were equal to the task pro- 
posed. First among them was the Second Per- 
son in the Trinity, who had become a perfect man, 
and, as such, had gone to the cross in proof of 
that infinite love which had sent and brought him 
to earth, and for the purpose of drawing all men 
to himself. To Him, on this account, had been 
given "the name which stands above all other 
names, so that in adoration of the name of Jesus 
every knee should bend in heaven, on earth, and 
under the earth, and that every tongue should 
acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory 

388 



CONCLUSION 389 

of God the Father." (Phil. 2:10, 11.) He had 
been clothed with all authority as King and Judge, 
that he might condemn, overthrow and drive out 
all his opposers. He had also been made the 
perfect High Priest of the race, that he might 
be "able to save perfectly those who come to God 
through him, living forever, as he does, to in- 
tercede on their behalf." (Heb. 7:25.) He was 
perfect as a lawgiver, perfect as an example, per- 
fect as an inspiration, perfect as a deliverer, and 
perfect as a restorer and upbuilder; and they be- 
lieved he would, therefore, certainly "make all 
things new." (Rev. 21 :5.) 

Associated with him were angels, and "are not 
all the angels spirits in the service of God, sent 
out to minister for the sake of those who are to 
obtain Salvation?" (Heb. 1:14.) Joined with 
him, also, as his servants in his work, were his 
people, to whom he had entrusted various powers 
and duties, making them, like himself, "God's fel- 
low-workers." (2 Cor. 6:1.) Associated with 
him, too, was the Third Person in the Trinity, 
the Holy Spirit, now to be known as the "Spirit 
of Christ" as well as the Spirit of God. (1 Pet. 
1:11.) The bringer of "conviction to the world 
as to Sin and as to Righteousness, and as to 
Judgment" (Jno. 16:8, 13; 14:25, 26), he was 
also "the Spirit of Truth" who was to "guide into 
all truth," and be "the Helper" of Christ's people 
in all things. 

Finally, the apostles knew "the God and Father 



390 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

of all — the God who is over all, pervades all and 
is in all." (Eph. 4:6.) They knew the great 
redemptive purpose, plan and undertaking to be 
pre-eminently His, and that He had determined 
to bring our Race to its highest possible per- 
fection under the rule of His Son, as "The First- 
born from the dead" (Col. 1 :18) and his own "ap- 
pointed heir of all things." (Heb. 1 :2.) 

They were satisfied that the great work in which 
they were privileged to engage was moral and 
spiritual in its nature, and that its aims were 
wide enough to take in every proper human 
activity. They did not look for the spectacular or 
the material excepting as these were supplied in 
connection with wars and political overthrows that 
would necessarily be looked upon as represent- 
ing their Lord's coming "from heaven with his 
mighty angels 'in flaming fire' to inflict punish- 
ment upon those who refuse to know God and 
upon those who turn a deaf ear to the Good News 
of Jesus, our Lord" (2 Thess. 1:7-8) ; and they 
confidently expected that the displays of this 
sort, which they themselves were looking for, 
would take place, as their Lord had taught, be- 
fore some of their number would be called to their 
rest. 

They had not forgotten the words of their 
instructor — "The kingdom of God does not come 
in a way that admits of observation, nor will 
people say, 'Look, here it is' ! or 'There it is !' 
for, mark me, the kingdom of God is already 



CONCLUSION 391 

among you" (Luke 17:20, 21) ; and wherever the 
king is with his loyal subjects there is the king- 
dom. You might therefore turn about at this 
moment and look upon it if you would. So said 
Jesus to the Pharisees. And he told them very 
plainly what they would find the kingdom like, 
as the time passed and the King went on with his 
work of judging men — and particularly his work 
of judging them. The events would be spectacu- 
lar enough, and as full of deliverance and holy 
triumph for all faithful subjects and servants 
of his, as of disaster and woe for those of them 
who proved rebellious. It would be soon seen 
that all peoples were under his scepter, and that 
as he had dealt with the one to which he first 
came, so he would deal with all the rest, till his 
laws were everywhere welcomed and obeyed, and 
his person regarded with the deepest reverence 
and love wherever men were found. An era 
would pass before all was done, but that genera- 
tion would not pass before it would become most 
strikingly evident that he was the very Judge 
of men he had declared himself to be. This 
revelation of himself he called "the coming of the 
Son of Man" (Matt. 24:27, 37, 39), and re- 
marked to Peter about John with reference to it 
at the time of that very memorable meeting by 
the Galilean Sea after his resurrection — "If it 
is my will that he should wait till I come, what 
has that to do with you?" (Jno. 21:22, 23.) 
As usual the disciples, not yet spiritually enlight- 



392 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

ened, began to talk of John as having been prom- 
ised exemption from death ; in view of which John 
himself very naively wrote — "Jesus did not say 
that that disciple was not to die, but said, if it 
is my will that he should wait till I come, what 
has that to do with you?" In point of fact, all 
took place as Jesus had indicated. Peter's "tent" 
was put away as his Master Himself had assured 
him it would be, and John waited till the "com- 
ing" and long afterwards, loving and serving. 
(Jno. 21 :18 ; 2 Pet. 1 :13, 14.) How touching in 
the light of this is his "Amen, come Lord Jesus," 
which we have already pointed out as almost the 
last word of Revelation — the book he wrote when 
his Lord was in the very act of manifesting him- 
self as the Judge of men. 

It will not be contended by! many that the apos- 
tles of our Lord and the spiritually minded mem- 
bers of the churches in their day, did not enter- 
tain these great hopes and expectations. What 
has been claimed is that those men were mis- 
taken, and that Paul, in particular, perceived his 
early blunder and corrected it. We have seen, 
however, that so far was this from having been 
really the case, that Paul actually fortified his 
first position, and proceeded to the development 
and elaboration of his doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion, until he viewed that initial event as the open- 
ing of such a door to life as must in the end 
make it the complete annihilator of disease and 
death on this planet, not on the behalf of man 



CONCLUSION 393 

alone, but also of all "nature" besides. And if 
we take the ground that these inspired writers of 
the New Testament were mistaken in regard to 
these matters, whether they ever came to know 
it or not, we must be prepared to go even further 
and claim that Jesus himself taught in such a 
manner as made it impossible for them to reach 
any other conclusions than those which they ad- 
vanced with such perfect confidence. We must 
remember, too, that it was not the men of leaden 
intellect and low and groveling desires, nor the 
dreamy, impracticable visionaries of the period, 
whose most cherished anticipations we have been 
dealing with. Paul and John and James and 
Peter were men of great acumen. They were 
also men of action, who touched life at almost 
every point in the most practical fashion. Next 
to Christ Himself they were the very creators 
of the church, and thus, in the long run, the 
molders of the thought and life of our whole 
race. 

It is certainly time we parted forever with 
the ambition to pose as the wise correctors 
of Christ and his apostles. Our inspiration is 
too poor for a task of such dimensions. Our 
highest place here is that of humble interpreters 
who tremblingly desire sufficient insight to per- 
ceive clearly the precise contents of the revela- 
tion which God gave to the world by means of 
these men, and powers of expression sufficiently 
ample to enable us to set forth what we are thus 



394 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

given to see, in such a way that we shall not 
darken the divine counsel with our poor human 
speech. 

There are, however, several quite legitimate 
questions which are likely to be asked in view of 
all that has been put forth in the preceding 
pages. The first of them is this. If Paul really 
believed in all these things, — if he really believed 
that our Lord was coming as Judge in connection 
with the destruction of Jerusalem, that the resur- 
rection of the righteous dead, at least, would take 
place then, and that all the righteous then living, 
and their successors through generation after 
generation, would put on spiritual bodies while 
they were still living in the flesh, till at length 
a painless and blissful absorption of the "animal" 
by the "spiritual" would, in a world that will 
have become wholly righteous at last, bring to an 
end the long and horrible reign of disease and 
death; how did it come to pass that practically 
no trace of this creed of his is to be found in 
Christian literature outside of the New Testa- 
ment itself? 

To ask still another question, why is it that in 
the first letter of John we find what looks like 
a virtual denial of the doctrine that Christ came 
as Judge at the destruction of Jerusalem? For 
was not this letter written after that event? 
And does not John state that many anti-Christs 
had risen already, and that the days in which he 
was writing were "the last days," or the days im- 



CONCLUSION 395 

mediately preceding the revelation of the Judge? 
(1 Jno. 2:18.) 

Dealing now with the latter question first, we 
may say at once that no one knows when the 
first letter of John was written. Some favor 
the year 85 or later as the probable date, but 
there is certainly nothing very definite about such 
a claim as that. The Twentieth Century re- 
visers say — "It is probable that it was written 
after the fall of Jerusalem and at a time when 
the second coming of Christ appeared to be im- 
minent." They further say that "it was prob- 
ably written at Ephesus after 70 A. D." And 
they cite the passage to which I have referred in 
proof of their view. In their version the pas- 
sage reads thus : — 

"My children, these are the last days. You 
were told that anti-Christ was coming and many 
anti-Christs have already arisen. By that we 
know that these are the last days." 

In what way these words support the conten- 
tion that the letter was written "after 70 A. D.," 
rather than during 70, let us say, they do not 
even hint. Did our Lord's prediction that there 
would be false Christs before the destruction of 
Jerusalem find no fulfillment? Or was it his pre- 
diction of his own coming in connection with that 
event that our revisers doubted the fulfillment of? 
As to the latter we have seen how definitely our 
Lord came both as Savior and Judge within the 
life-time of the generation to which he himself 



396 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

had ministered while in the flesh, and how he came 
to abide till his work was done. 

In point of fact the New Testament presents 
three of these "Comings" of Christ. For besides 
his coming as spiritual Savior and his coming 
as Royal Judge, which we have already looked 
into with as much care as we could, there is still 
another referred to by John in the third chapter 
of his first letter, where he writes of being like 
Christ through seeing "him as he really is." 
(1 Jno. 3:2.) Each coming, must, as we have 
seen, be considered as a revelation, and this com- 
ing is our Lord's revelation of Himself as the 
Exemplar and Transformer of his people. Their 
supreme difficulty is that of comprehending him 
in his moral and spiritual perfections, and this 
is at the same time their supreme spiritual neces- 
sity. They are changed into his image from 
glory to glory, not all at once, nor all in one or 
even a hundred generations, but only as they can 
intelligently grasp and appreciate the things 
of which that glory is made up. He is revealed 
to them, or comes to them, only gradually and 
slowly, therefore, as exemplar and transformer 
or renewer. And this is just as true of his other 
comings or revelations. He only began to be 
revealed as the spiritual Savior of men at Pente- 
cost, and as Royal Judge in connection with the 
destruction of Jerusalem. He cannot stand out 
with perfect clearness in any respect before men's 
eyes till all his work is done. Their eyes will 



CONCLUSION 397 

not be fully purged till then, nor will he himself 
be all disclosed. This was well understood by 
Paul, for he wrote of seeing "the glory of the 
Lord" only "as if reflected in a mirror." He 
had written before — 

"As yet we see in a mirror dimly, but then — 
face to face. As yet my knowledge is incom- 
plete, but then I shall know in full, as I have been 
fully known." (1 Cor. 13:12.) And years 
afterwards, he wrote again, "My aim is to get 
to know Christ" (Phil. 3:10, Tentative version 
T. C. N. T.) till he stands sufficiently revealed 
before my eyes to make it possible for me to 
"grow like him in his death," and "attain to the 
resurrection from the dead" which was his. 

Those will do well to remember these facts, 
who, in view of the teaching of this volume, have 
begun to wonder if Paul would not now look upon 
the Lord's Supper as an out-of-date institution, 
since according to his own word it was a pro- 
claiming of "the Lord's death — till He comes." 

John saw the New Jerusalem coming down 
from God out of Heaven. It had not all come, 
nor has it all come yet. We see it coming still. 
Our Lord's comings or revelations continue, and 
will do so till all his holy life has entered into 
our humanity and made it, also, both holy and 
deathless. 

On the matter of the Antichrists, on the other 
hand, we can do no better, perhaps, than quote 
some exceedingly sane words from Farrar's 



898 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

"Early Days of Christianity" — "The word an- 
tichrist, which St. John alone uses, may mean 
either 'Rivals of Christ — i. e., pseudo-Christs 
(Matt. 24:5, 11), or enemies of Christ'; either 
those who try to pass themselves off as Christ 
or those who set themselves in open array against 
him. An Antichrist may take the semblance of 
a Nero or of a Simon Magus, of a Priest or of 
a Voltaire. St. John enters into no details be- 
cause his readers had already heard that anti- 
christ cometh. This must refer to his own oral 
teachings, or those of other apostles, for he tells 
us afterwards that by 'Antichrists' he means 
those who deny the incarnation (4:3) or who 
deny the Father and the Son (2:22). This form 
of Antichrist is not described either by Daniel, 
or by St. Paul in his Man of Sin. If, in 2 Thess. 
3 :4, the expression of St. Paul may admit of some 
sort of analogous interpretation, it certainly 
could not have been assumed by St. Paul that the 
brief letter to a Macedonian Church would have 
already pervaded the whole of Asia. 

"Nevertheless, the prevalence of these Anti- 
christs, of whom St. John had orally spoken, was 
the direct fulfillment of the weeping prophecy of 
St. Paul in his farewell to the Ephesian Elders, 
'that after his departure grievous wolves would 
enter among them, not sparing the flock, and that 
from among their own selves men would arise 
speaking perverted things to drag away disciples 
after them,' The very danger to the Church 



CONCLUSION 399 

lay in the fact that this Antichristian teaching 
arose out of her own bosom. The Antichrists 
did not openly apostatize from the Christian 
body ; they corrupted it from within. They still 
called themselves Christians ; had they really been 
so, they would have continued to be so. But 
their present apostasy was a manifestation of 
the fact that they never had been true Christians, 
and that not all who called themselves Christians, 
are such in reality." 

It may be noted, too, that the words, "these 
are the last days," are by no means a literal 
translation. They only represent what the re- 
visers believed to be the true sense. Such de- 
partures from literal renderings must often be 
made if the sense is to be clearly stated for the 
reader of English, but they represent, at the same 
time, a kind of work in which every prepossession 
will obtrude itself, and in which translations are 
only too apt to degenerate into mere glosses. 
Let us take an instance which will illustrate this 
fact. 

When these revisers changed the literal "bap- 
tized into Christ" and "baptized into Moses" so 
as to make them read, in one case, "baptized into 
union with Christ," and in the other, "underwent 
baptism as followers of Moses," it is very doubt- 
ful whether they did not wholly miss the idea 
which was in the apostle's mind. (Gal. 3 :27 ; 
Rom. 6:3 and 1 Cor. 10:2.) Indeed it seems per- 
fectly clear that they did. For in their tenta- 



400 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

tive version, they rendered the one passage which 
sets forth that idea unmistakably, so as to cover 
it up altogether. We refer to % Cor. 12:13, 
which they translated, or rather, paraphrased 
thus : — "It was through one spirit, and to form 
one Body, that we were all baptized, whether 
Jews or Greeks, slaves or free men." Now if 
they had given it to us literally (they have al- 
most done it in their final version) they would 
have made it plain that Paul had in mind the 
Church as the body of Christ, and was teaching 
that by a spiritual baptism both Jews and 
Gentiles were being made members of that body. 
"Baptism into Christ" was his way of setting 
forth that change which, after Jesus and John 
and Peter and James, we call regeneration and 
conversion. 

Paul thought of the Israelites as so brought 
under the personality of Moses, by means of their 
night's experience in the Red Sea, that they be- 
came, as it were, members of his body. On the 
Eigyptian side of the sea they had been faith- 
less, rebellious, ready to renounce his will and 
leadership altogether; but by means of their pas- 
sage on dry ground through the midst of that 
Sea, which he had been instrumental in securing 
for them, they lost their will in his, so far forth 
as that will had to do with the journey upon 
which they had set out. Just so, too, the be- 
liever in Christ, "whether Jew or Greek, slave or 
free man," was conceived of by Paul as having 



CONCLUSION 401 

parted with his old self-centered individuality 
and come into the very body of Christ to know 
his will and that alone; and he taught that this 
change was effected by a baptism of the Holy 
Spirit. It was, of course, this spiritual trans- 
formation in its ideal perfection, rather than as 
it actually stood revealed in the individual be- 
liever that Paul had in his mind when he produced 
these passages, but it is scarcely open to doubt 
that the image which was present to his thinking 
all the while, was the one we have indicated. But 
if so, no paraphrase of any sort can do anything 
but mislead. "Baptized into one body, into 
Christ, into Moses," are words which present the 
very image of the thing as no other words can. 

The unhappy looseness of these renderings of 
the Twentieth Century revisers probably repre- 
sents a failure on their part to perceive that the 
Pauline doctrine of baptismal regeneration is re- 
generation by the Holy Spirit, considered entirely 
apart from water baptism. No New Testament 
writer ever described water baptism as baptism 
into a body or person. The apostles baptized 
by water, not "into Jesus Christ," but "into the 
Name or Faith of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 8:16, 
19:5; Matt. 28:19), as the Master Himself had 
told them they should. They knew that its effect 
was only that of entitling the person baptized to 
bear the Christian name and share in the Chris- 
tian privileges and responsibilities of the time; 
that its effect was churchly as distinguished from 



402 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

spiritual, outward and ritual and not inward and 
heart-transforming. It was in view of this fact 
that Paul was inspired to represent the Holy 
Spirit's regenerating work as a baptism "into 
Jesus Christ," — a baptism of Jews and heathens 
of every class "into one body." And thus, as 
the writer of Hebrews shows us, there came to be 
a doctrine, not of baptism but "of baptisms" 
(Heb. 6:2), which was too high and difficult for 
the average member of the apostolic church, and 
which he felt compelled on that account to pass 
by. Another doctrine, however, speedily arose in 
its place, from which the church, as a whole, has 
never yet been able to free herself. 

Nothing, however, even in theology, has been 
really settled, that has not been settled logically 
and scientifically, that is to say, in view of the 
actual facts. For after all has been said, it will 
be found that the human mind was not built in 
two sections, one of which was indissolubly linked 
with the reasoning faculty, while the other was 
not. The difference between a baptized child and 
an unbaptized one, as shown by their later de- 
velopment, is appreciable only to those who have 
the dogma of regeneration through baptism by 
water to maintain, and have, therefore, passed 
judgment upon the matter beforehand, leaving 
no room for any real examination into it. To 
say this, however, is not to deny that infant 
baptism is desirable, but only to assert that 
baptism by water is not the heaven-appointed 



CONCLUSION 403 

means for bringing us, either in our infancy or 
our later years, into saving relations with the 
atonement of Christ. Baptism by water is the 
sign and seal of the fact that those to whom it 
is administered, whether infants or adults, have 
been definitely acknowledged by the Church as 
belonging to Christendom, and as therefore en- 
titled to the church's special care, instruction and 
discipline. Whether such a baptized individual, 
infant or adult, is spiritually regenerated or not, 
is a question that must be determined by spiritual 
and not ritual tests, as the whole church of Christ 
will acknowledge the moment she has in her en- 
tirety abandoned irrational dogma for sound doc- 
trine, which, while it may transcend present 
definite knowledge, never flatly contradicts either 
reason or fact. The genuinely Christian posi- 
tion is that all infants possess spiritual life 
through Christ, as the Second Adam, at birth, 
and that this life may be lost by them, and also 
restored by the original giver during the years 
of personal responsibility which come later; and 
that all our Lord's saving work is accomplished 
spiritually and not ritually. Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper are teaching ordinances, and 
they are greatly helpful in that way but in no 
other. 

The point we have been preparing to make is 
this. If the prepossessions of the Twentieth 
Century revisers led them away from Paul's idea 
every time they touched his doctrine of spiritual 



404 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

baptism, we may be pardoned for fancying that 
they made a like blunder when they came to deal 
with that word of John which we have had under 
our notice. They represent him as having twice 
declared "these are the last days," whereas the 
literal thing he said twice was "this is the last 
hour." May it not have been that the letter 
was written during the year 70 just before the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and that the apostle 
who so loved to dwell upon the fact of his Lord's 
coming, and so earnestly prayed for it, saw when 
he wrote, that it was indeed the church's "last 
hour" of waiting for that event, and also the last 
hour of respite for her Jewish foes. At least his 
manner of statement is graphic enough and 
solemn enough for that. 

If on the other hand, however, the date of this 
letter should ever be definitely proved to have 
been later than the year 70, it will not then be 
forgotten that the word "hour," like the word 
"day," can be used to represent an era or time- 
period, and it will be understood that John was 
teaching in this passage that the presence of so 
many Antichrists in the world was a strong 
proof that Christ Himself was here to be op- 
posed, that he had come and was present among 
men to carry on to its completion every under- 
taking connected with his great work of redeem- 
ing our race ; and because he could not fail in 
any respect as those who were before him had 
done, there would be nothing for another to un- 



CONCLUSION 405 

dertake when he had finished. He was the Christ, 
the King crowned by God for the whole race, and 
the whole race, recognizing' him as supreme in 
character, would eventually unite to crown Him 
on its own account. 

Therefore, wrote John, this is the final era 
of human redemption, it is the very last hour 
that will be needed. 

The first question still remains to be dealt with. 
It is this : — If Paul really believed in all these 
things, and entertained these lively expectations ; 
if he believed that our Lord was coming as Judge 
in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem ; 
that the resurrection of the righteous dead at 
least would take place then ; and that all the 
righteous then living and their successors 
through generation after generation would put 
on spiritual bodies while they were still living in 
the flesh, till at length a painless and blissful 
absorption of the "animal" by the "spiritual," 
would, in a world that had become wholly right- 
eous at last, bring to a final end the long and 
horrible reign of disease and death: if he really 
believed and taught all these things and was 
joined in part at least by the other New Testa- 
ment writers, how did it come to pass that prac- 
tically no trace of this creed of his is to be found 
in Christian literature outside of the New Testa- 
ment itself? This question can be answered with 
perfect frankness, and in such a manner as to 
satisfy every reasonable mind. 



406 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

That a given thing has not been grasped or 
fully understood is no proof that it has never 
been clearly offered as a matter of definite in- 
struction to any responsible body of men. To 
readers of the New Testament this should seem 
like a very ordinary statement. Jesus knew 
how to present an idea accurately ; how to state 
a fact plainly. Yet there were two things at 
least, which he failed to make his immediate dis- 
ciples comprehend — that he was actually to go 
to the cross and rise again from the dead; and 
that his kingdom was not immediately to assume 
a political form, with Himself as its visible king. 
He so many times assured them that he would 
be crucified, that Matthew introduces the subject 
with the remark that "at this time Jesus Christ 
began to explain to his disciples that he must 
go to Jerusalem, and undergo much suffering at 
the hands of the Councilors, and Chief Priests, 
and teachers of the law, and be put to death, and 
rise on the third day." (Matt. 16:21.) And 
Matthew goes on to say that these words were 
so well understood by the disciples that Peter at 
once went so far as to deny their accuracy to the 
Master's very face, and was by our Lord ad- 
dressed as "Satan" for his perverse attempt to 
shut out the truth and hinder in a wrongful way 
the coming to pass of the stupendous event itself. 
But Peter's perversity of intellect continued in 
spite of the severity of Jesus' rebuke. And he 
was no worse than the rest, for they were all 



CONCLUSION 407 

equally deaf and blind, as the whole of the later 
story proves. 

Perhaps our Lord's word about Mary, the 
sister of Lazarus, keeping or having kept that 
box of spikenard which she opened at the feast 
which was given in his honor a week before his 
death, for the day of his burial, indicates that 
she had become convinced that he was really to 
die. (Jno. 12:7, 8.) But if so, she stands out 
as the one solitary exception to the general fail- 
ure to accept his teaching on the subject as 
literally true. And so persistent was their in- 
capacity for taking in the real nature of the 
kingdom he was to set up, that "on one occasion 
when the apostles had met together," after his 
resurrection and just prior to his ascension, 
"they asked Jesus this question, — 'Master, is 
this the time when you intend to reestablish the 
kingdom for Israel?' " And he, in pity for their 
blindness, withheld the direct answer, which would 
have proved a stumbling-block to them, and 
gave them one which guided their thoughts 
heavenward and prepared them for a more com- 
plete entrance into his kingdom on their own 
behalf. 

This power of his to comprehend and adapt 
Himself to their limitations stands revealed in 
these last wonderful words of his to them just 
before he led them to Gethsemane, — "I have still 
much to say to you, but you cannot bear it now. 
But when he, — the Spirit of Truth — comes, he 



408 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

will guide you into all Truth ; for he will not 
speak on his own authority but will speak all 
that he hears ; and he will tell you of the things 
that are to come. He will honor me; because he 
will take of what is mine, and will tell it to you. 
Everything that the Father has is mine ; that is 
why I said that he takes of what is mine, and 
will tell it to you." (Jno. 16:12-15.) 

But as Jesus had to adapt his teachings to the 
comprehension of his followers ; and even then 
failed to get into their minds some of the things 
which he taught, so was it also with the apostles 
after the promised Holy Spirit had made them 
in their turn the divinely inspired instructors of 
their fellowmen. 

Paul writes to the Corinthians : "But I, 
Brothers, could not speak to you as men with 
spiritual insight but only as worldly minded — 
mere infants in the Faith of Christ. I fed you 
with milk, not with solid food, for you were not 
then able to take it." (1 Cor. 3:1-2.) 

In writing to Titus he declared : "There are in- 
deed, many unruly persons, great talkers who de- 
ceive themselves. ... It was a Cretan — one 
of their own teachers — who said : 'Cretans are 
always liars, base brutes, and gluttonous idlers' ; 
and his statement is true. Therefore, rebuke 
them sharply, so that they may be sound in the 
faith." 

And this inability to receive truth readily and 
hold it purely was omnipresent in the church, 



CONCLUSION 409 

just as one might have anticipated; for how could 
these Jews and heathens have got rid all at once 
of the whole vast mass of puerilities and super- 
stitious absurdities, which had made up, as one 
might say, the very warp and woof of their think- 
ing; and have risen out of the debasing ma- 
terialism in which for ages they had been steeped, 
to enter immediately into the full comprehension 
of all the spiritual facts pertaining to Christian- 
ity? The thing was impossible. 

The letter of Jude is largely a description of 
and warning against "certain godless people" 
who had "crept" into the church, and become a 
peril to its very existence ; who "malign what- 
ever they do not understand; while they use such 
things as they know by instinct (like the animals 
that have no reason) for their own corruption." 
(Jude 4, 10.) The reason these people were such 
a peril to the church, was that the body, taken 
as a whole, was so ignorant and unspiritual. 
Consequently the writer of our New Testament 
letter to the Hebrews, declared to those whom he 
addressed — 

"Now on this subject I have much to say, but 
it is difficult to explain it to you, because you have 
shown yourselves so slow to learn. For, while 
considering the time that has elapsed, you ought 
to be teaching others ; you still need someone to 
teach you the very alphabet of the divine revela- 
tion, and need again to be fed with 'milk' instead 
of with 'solid food'. . . . For every one who 



410 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

still has to take 'milk' knows nothing of the 
Teaching of Righteousness ; he is a mere infant. 
But 'solid food' is for Christians of mature faith 
— those whose faculties have been trained by prac- 
tice to distinguish right from wrong. There- 
fore, let us leave behind the elementary teaching 
about the Christ and press on to perfection, not 
always laying over again a foundation of re- 
pentance for a lifeless formality, of faith in God 
— teaching concerning baptisms and the laying 
on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and a 
final judgment. Yes, and with God's help, so 
we will." (Heb. 5:11-6:3.) 

How clearly these words reveal the fact that 
upon these very subjects with which we have been 
dealing, the apostolic leaders of thought found 
it most difficult to produce accurate impressions. 
So impossible had the task become in his time 
that this writer tells those whom he had set out to 
instruct, that for the present at least he must 
simply avoid "teaching concerning baptisms and 
the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the 
dead and a final judgment." 

Peter very plainly tells us the reason. Paul, 
he says, had undertaken the task with such poor 
results, that it was about as well to let the sub- 
ject drop till the church grew wiser and more 
spiritual. If in addition to all this it should, 
contrary to much learned expectation, turn out 
in the end that the author of "Hebrews" was no 
less a personage than Paul himself, his refraining 



CONCLUSION 411 

from these subjects which were so familiar and 
so dear to him, will appear still more significant ; 
for it would then be seen that the church had 
proved herself so incapable of understanding 
them, that their very chiefest exponent had to 
abandon them in his public teaching. 

But let us see just how Peter makes his point 
touching Paul's failure here — 

"The day of the Lord will come like a thief; 
and on that day the heavens will pass away with 
a crash — the elements will be burnt up and dis- 
solved, and the earth and all that is in it will be 
disclosed. Now, since all these things are in the 
process of dissolution, think what you yourselves 
ought to be — what holy and pious lives you should 
lead, while you await and hasten the Day of 
God. At its coming the heavens will be dis- 
solved in fire, and the elements melted by heat, 
but we look for 'new heavens and a new earth,' 
where righteousness shall have its home, in ful- 
fillment of the promise of God. 

"Therefore, dear friends, in expectation of 
these things, make every effort to be found by 
him spotless, blameless, and at peace. Regard 
our Lord's forbearance as your only hope of 
Salvation. This is what our dear Brother Paul 
wrote to you, with the wisdom that God gave 
him. It is the same in all his letters, when he 
speaks in them about these subjects. There are 
some things in them difficult to understand, which 
untaught and weak people distort, just as they 



412 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

do all other writings, to their own Ruin." (2 
Pet. 3:10-16.) 

It would almost seem that this confession of 
Peter that some of the things Paul advanced on 
these themes were "difficult to understand," must 
be taken to prove that he himself was unable to 
spell his way completely through them. And 
this need not disturb us. There is what we may 
call an economy about God's way of revealing the 
great facts of human redemption. And it may 
well have been that in that economy Paul was the 
only man who was inspired to see all the way 
along the divine processes to their very end. 

If a man stands alone in his inspiration, his 
inspiration is greater, not less, because of that. 
Failure to get one's message understood may 
prove the same thing. It requires no inspiration 
at all to tell the things everybody knows. And 
the farther one goes beyond his fellows in the 
things he is given to see, the fewer there will be 
who will be able to follow him at all. 

The question, — Was he understood? is im- 
portant historically, but not exegetically. The 
same may be said of the question, — How was he 
understood? The one inquiry that really mat- 
ters from the standpoint of interpretation is — 
What was it precisely that he set out to teach? 
And this is the question which we have been ask- 
ing in the presence of our Lord, and of the New 
Testament writers, throughout our present un- 
dertaking. 



CONCLUSION 413 

We may now note afresh some of the things 
which have come within our view during the prog- 
ress of this discussion. We have seen our Lord 
Jesus Christ as Royal Judge condemning and 
overthrowing all the opposers of his kingdom, 
until none remained to hinder, and his people 
filled the whole earth. We have looked upon his 
march as deliverer from death, and seen him 
raising the dead and changing the living, till at 
length what was mortal in men no longer fell into 
decay but was, on the contrary, "absorbed in 
Life" (II Cor. 5:4), and even "nature" itself 
escaped "from its enslavement to decay and at- 
tained to the freedom which will mark the glory 
of the children of God." (Rom. 8:21.) He 
has also appeared before us as a complete Savior, 
and we have seen him leading his people up to 
the heights of knowledge and holiness "until they 
reached the ideal man — the full standard of the 
perfection of the Christ" ; and every activity of 
theirs, social, political, and churchly, harmonized 
with the divine requirements. 

The story is that of an evolution — an evolu- 
tion through Christ. He came as the Creator 
of a new order, or, if anyone prefers it, as the 
restorer and upbuilder of the original order, 
which the fall of our race arrested at its very 
inception. He came as the Father of an age, 
and of an order in which the spiritual was at 
length to absorb or swallow up the animal, and 
even the material as we commonly use the term. 



414 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

He took upon him our animal nature, but with- 
out fulfilling its chief function — that of beget- 
ting others to succeed him. His life belonged to 
the realm of the spiritual, and because it was 
lived on that plane with a perfect persistence, 
all of him that was material and mortal was 
lifted to the same height. Then he proceeded to 
draw up the race of mankind after him — slowly, 
as became the author of those patient processes 
in nature, which we have learned to call by the 
name of evolution, but surely and triumphantly. 
According to the New Testament, this process is 
to move along all the lines of our nature and its 
activities, till his words that are "spirit" and 
"life" have by their might transmuted and trans- 
formed all things into their own nature and like- 
ness. 

How full of significance in view of all this are 
those words which our Lord addressed to 
Martha, when he said — 

"I am the resurrection and the life. He that 
believes in me shall live though he die ; and he 
who lives and believes in me shall never die." 
Jesus was guilty here of no poor play on words. 
He was not juggling with our human speech. 
On the contrary, he was revealing by means of 
it more than Martha or anyone who listened to 
him then was prepared to take in. Later John, 
at least, took in enough of their significance to 
record them for the church's instruction and 
benefit. 1 



CONCLUSION 415 

"The life" is much more than "the resurrec- 
tion," and to die and rise again is to enjoy a 
poor victory compared with theirs who "will never 
die at all" because Christ's spirit and life will 
have made them immortal. Our Lord opened up 
before Martha the whole long vista of the re- 
deeming years, that she might look upon their 
crowning triumph. 

We may also read the fourteenth chapter of 
John in the light of this revelation. "My 
Father's Home" — What is that but the place 
where all his children are? So it must be here 
as well as yonder. It was to men who were to 
stay here and do and suffer, that he brought for- 
ward the facts concerning it as a source of pres- 
ent comfort and inspiration. His words were to 
the eleven disciples, and to us only after them, 
and the things he promised were to be realized 
by them very early, there in Jerusalem largely, 
and not elsewhere at the close of unnumbered 
millenniums. 

"In my Father's home there are many dwell- 
ings" — many dwellings. You are in one of them 
now, but it is a very poor one comparatively. I 
live in a much better one, and I shall introduce 
you to it. 

"I am going to prepare a place for you." I 
am going to the Father and when I return and 
take you to be with me, you will know that I am 
in union with the Father, that you are with me 
and I with you there, and, therefore, that here 



416 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

and yonder are not places separated from each 
other but are really one place, one Father's home 
with many dwellings. I am speaking to you of 
spiritual things. You are as yet unspiritual, 
and cannot fully understand the things I am say- 
ing to you. It is first of all a matter of spiritual 
revealings which cannot be detected by the bodily 
senses. The Holy Spirit will come. The Father 
will send him, and he will bring it all to pass. 
Your love for me will be so fully awakened that 
you will do or dare anything that I wish you to 
undertake or face. Then the Father and I my- 
self will stand revealed in your consciousness, and 
you will be most definitely aware of our presence 
with you and all about you, and will rejoice as 
never before, and that even when you are expe- 
riencing hardships and perils. The Holy Spirit, 
too, will reveal himself to you in his own person- 
ality, and you will find that you have indeed been 
taken to dwell where I am, that is, in the Father 
Himself, as the primary source of all life and 

"I shall return." When was this word ful- 
filled? After his resurrection visibly; at Pente- 
cost invisibly and spiritually, but more gloriously 
than before ; at the destruction of Jerusalem 
triumphantly against persecuting Judaism and 
to raise from the dead those who had fallen 
asleep in Him before that time, to introduce all 
true believers then living to that change which 
corresponds to the resurrection, and thencefor- 



CONCLUSION 417 

ward to carry on his work till all was done. 

"In truth I tell you, he who believes in me will 
himself do the work I am doing; and he will do 
greater work still, because I am going to the 
Father." 

The ages of redemption with all their wealth 
of achievement and blessing for the race, as these 
were anticipated by the apostles, were before 
Jesus when he uttered these words ; and they alone 
could justify them. But it will be seen when all 
has been accomplished, that Jesus had to take 
a somewhat lowly place as a worker in the inter- 
ests of our humanity, when he was here in the 
flesh. He could cure disease then, but he could 
not banish it. He could raise the dead, but he 
could not deliver men from the necessity of dy- 
ing, nor provide them with spiritual bodies in 
which to quit their animal ones. He could not 
even escape death Himself. Neither could He, 
on the other hand, lift the veil of ignorance and 
lead men on to perfect knowledge. Nor could he 
transform the social and political conditions in 
the midst of which he lived. All these greater 
things were left to be accomplished by, or, rather, 
through those who should believe on Him during 
the long series of generations which was to fol- 
low, and which has probably even now been only 
well begun. But these greater things were all 
to be done, and will yet all be worked out in the 
manner which the Holy Spirit has indicated in 
the New Testament, where he has according to 



418 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

the Lord's further promise, told us "of the things 
that are to come." 

Have any of these things actually arrived? 
They certainly have. And they continue to come 
with comparative rapidity. The old tyrannies 
and human slavery which Jesus could not touch 
at all, excepting from a distance, by means of 
his great principles of the brotherhood of man 
and the true law of service, have been directly 
faced and fought by his followers, till they are 
now all but exterminated. Great strides have 
been made in the application of the divine law 
touching the marriage relation and family life. 
Commerce has been vastly improved. War has 
been largely stripped of its horrors, and has it- 
self become so abhorrent to the Christian con- 
sciousness that it cannot survive through many 
centuries more. The vice of drunkenness is now 
being combated with a full knowledge of the 
physiological, as well as the intellectual and 
spiritual effects produced by alcohol, so that it 
it is at last clearly doomed. Philanthropies have 
multiplied and are multiplying, and among the 
most striking of them are the philanthropies of 
war. The churches are everywhere moving along 
the lines indicated by our Lord in his prayer that 
all his followers might be one. Christendom 
carries what remains of the heathen world upon 
its heart. "The white man's burden" has as- 
sumed huge dimensions, for it is really the burden 
of Christ — poorly borne by the white man often, 



CONCLUSION 419 

jet Christ's burden nevertheless. Disease and 
death have more than met their match in the skill 
of the Christian physician and surgeon, and are 
being steadily beaten back. The average life- 
time of a generation in Christian lands is longer 
by years than it was a century ago. Deeds of 
healing are done daily as a mere matter of course, 
which in the time of Christ and his apostles would 
have been looked upon as miracles ; and the only 
end to it all which one can foresee is that which 
our Lord Himself foretold and made not only 
possible but certain. 

Finally we find ourselves living to-day in the 
presence of the invisible, the intangible and the 
incomprehensible, and compelled to regard them 
as at once the mightiest and the most abiding. 

One may say with some confidence that the true 
story of the material universe, and of our own 
planet in particular, is simply that of the evolu- 
tion of Life. The atom lives as really as the 
glorified Christ. The difference between them 
may be set forth in two ways and regarded as 
either a difference in kind or a difference in de- 
gree. Perhaps the theologian will prefer the 
former alternative, but the scientist will choose the 
latter. The first manifestations of Life are pos- 
sibly still with us in the unorganized particles of 
ether. Is there somewhere a connecting link be- 
tween these and the whirling, dancing electrons 
which have given their allegiance to the center of 
control in the atom? Just what, materially con- 



420 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 

sidered, is the center of control itself? One asks 
also by what means such variety was attained in 
the composition of atoms to form the elements, 
and the union of these again to produce the multi- 
plied chemical combinations in their varying 
forms. Whatever the answers to these questions 
may be when they reach us, they cannot in the 
least alter the fact that all these steps quite 
clearly belong to the same upward march which 
we follow when later we find ourselves in the com- 
pany of the plasma-cells of the whole vegetable 
and animal series. The first processes are as in- 
timately related to the second as they were ab- 
solutely essential to their beginning and mainte- 
nance. The self-conscious, too, found its stepping 
stone and permanent foundation in the conscious, 
and the moral sense, or individual conscience, in 
the community sense. The moral sense is the 
highest and most precious development of com- 
mon sense. The unfailing conscience of Jesus, 
too, was but the logical outcome of the whole proc- 
ess in that direction, just as the human intelli- 
gence fully informed for all terrestrial require- 
ments, will be seen to be the logical, the natural 
and the necessary outcome of the evolution of in- 
tellect upon our planet, the moment the day of 
even one such gloriously equipped intellect arrives 
in connection with the ever growing division of 
labor and care for each other among men. So 
also a body enduringly worthy of Life at its best 
in men and permanently desirable, because readily 



CONCLUSION 421 

adaptable to all the uses they may have for it, 
will be looked upon as the one and only suitable 
crown or culmination of the whole evolutionary 
progress along the line of sentient organisms. 
For, given perfect housing and complete equip- 
ment, Life, as it appears in men, can have no 
bounds to its lofty possibilities. And Life at its 
highest in self-conscious individual intellects and 
consciences, duly developed and furnished, must 
know and dwell in harmony with that which is 
above, as well as with that which is about and 
beneath it. But that which transcends Life, as 
it appears in men, is that Life's Source in God 
himself. Thus all Life is seen to be the one Life 
in various phases and stages of manifestation. 
Science passes into Theology and Theology back 
again into Science, so that from whichever side of 
things we view all, we see the God who "himself 
gives to all life and breath and all things," and 
know that "in him we live and move and are." 
(Acts 17:25, 28.) 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Age, Close of the, 312, 374, 

381 
Ahaz, 40 
Archetypal Man, Jesus the, 

86 
Atonement, Jesus and the, 

186 
Azazel, 246 seq. 

Baptism, 34, 35 

Baptism Into Christ, 
399 seq. 

Blood of Christ His Obedi- 
ence Unto Death, The, 
198-201 

Biblical Ethics, Jesus and, 
270 

Call of Jesus, The, 55, 76, 92 
Carpenter's Shop, The, 53 
Change, The Resurrection al, 

322 seq. 
Christ, Jesus Made The, 92, 

93 
Church, Jesus's Love for 

His^ 182 seq., 380 
Church, Jesus the Redeemer 

of His, 168 
Church of Christ, Isaiah's 

and Micah's Visions . of 

the, 168 seq. 
Church of Christ Made Uni- 
versal, The, 381 
Church of Christ Perfected, 

378 seq. 



Church of Christ Not in 
Lord's Prayer, 165-6 

Church of Christ— Why It 
Exists, 162, 167 

Clouds that Protect, 325, 
328 

Consciousness of Jesus, 
The, 45 

Consciousness of Jesus Hu- 
man, The, 79 

Consciousness of Jesus Not 
Dual, The, 81 

Consciousness of Jesus — 
Will It Endure? The, 83 

Creator, God as, 22 seq., 
190, 193 

"Cruciality of the Cross, 
The," 187 



Death of Jesus an Awaken- 
ing Fact, The, 255, 258 

Deliverer from Death, Jesus 
the, 321 

Desert Temptation, The, 58- 
60, 72 

Destiny, Jesus and Nation- 
al, 350 

Divorce, Jesus on, 131 seq. 

Disappointment, Heart of 
Jesus Broken by, 183 

Enduement of Jesus, The, 
90 seq. 

Eschatology of Jesus, The, 
301 



425 



426 



INDEX 



Eschatology, The Scheme of 
Redemption an, 388, 413 

Eschatology of New Testa- 
ment — Why Misunder- 
stood, 410 

Ethical Code Denned, 
286 

Ethics of Bible Incom- 
plete, 279, 283, 290 

Evolution, Its Limits, 98 

Exegesis, Some Principles 
of, 14 seq. 

Failure, When Jesus Fore- 
saw, 173 

Fall a Racial Fact, The, 8 

Fasting of Jesus, The, 59 

Forbearance, God's, 26-7 

Forgiveness a Deliverance 
from Sinning, 233 

Forgiveness Brings Self- 
Approval, 236, 241 

Forgiveness Establishes 

Obedience to God, 233 seq. 

Forgiveness Is Through Sur- 
render and Consecration, 
218 seq. 

French Revolution, Jesus 
and the, 119 

Forsyth, Principal, 187, 224 

Gethsemane, The Cup in, 
179 seq. |j 

God Is Love, 140, 143 

Growth of Jesus, The, 67 
seq. 

Guilt, Our Sense of, 29, 32 

Haeckel, Ernest, 2, 6 
Harnack, Accepted, 8 



Heredity, 31, 45-50 

Home Training of Jesus, 

50 seq. 
House, The Father's, 

415 

Inspiration and Revelation, 
6 

Ignorance of Jesus, The, 
69 seq., 106 

Immanuel, 38 

"Immortality, The Evolu- 
tion of," 340 

Intercession, The Source of, 
271 

Intercessor, The Holy Spirit 
as, 277 

Jerusalem, The Destruction 

of, 358, 384 
Jesus and the Holy Spirit, 

85 
Jesus Human, 103 
Jesus Finite, 38, 417 
Jesus — His Divinity or 

Deity, 103, 105 
Jesus and the Father, 56, 60, 

123, 136 seq. 
Jesus the Social Reformer, 

117 
Jesus as Judge, 75, 351 
Jesus and War, 73, 75, 127- 

129, 140, 173, 364 
Jesus Obedient to the Fath- 
er, 68, 198 
Joseph and Mary, 47 
John the Baptist, 46, 56, 71, 

91 

Kingdom and Church of 
Jesus, The, 152 



INDEX 



427 



Kingdom of Christ — How 
Made His, 153, 158 

Kingdom of Christ — How 
Long to Continue, 159 

Kingdom of Christ Fin- 
ished, 381, 382 

Kingdom of God— What It 
Is, 152-6, 263 

Kingdom of God Gradually 
Developed, 379, 390 

.Kingship of Christ, 301-5, 
350, 369 

Life, 5, 414, 419 
Life, The Holy Spirit as, 86, 
98, 99 

Making of Jesus, The, 45 
Man and Nature at the 

Last, 382 
Mediator and Intercessor, 

Jesus, the, 261 
Mediates, What Christ, 

264, 274 
Memory in Matter, 2-5 

Nature Defined, 4 
Nature's Eager Expectation, 

333, 413 
Nazareth, One Good Thing 

in, 54 
New Earth, 375 

Oaths, Jesus on, 130 

Obedience of Jesus — Its 
Atoning Value, 198 seq. 

Origin of Species, The Vir- 
gin Birth as Key to, 100, 
footnote. 

Outcasts of Society, Jesus' 
Plea for the, 133, 143 



Parthenogenesis and the 
Virgin Birth, 94 seq. 

Patriotism of Jesus, 176, 184 

Paul on Christ as Deliverer 
from the Law, 284-5 

Perfect Ethical Code, Jesus 
and the, 294 

Personal Equation in Mor- 
als, 282 

Prenatal Influences and 
Jesus, 48 seq. 

Priest, The, 1, 119, 203 seq., 
232, 245, 248 

Prophet, The, 1, 203 seq., 
232, 249 

Propitiation, 196 



Race and Parentage of 
Jesus, 45 

Redemption — Its Scope, 10 
seq. 

Responsibility, Human — Its 
Measure, 29, 32, 191-2, 
224-5 

Responsibility of the Cre- 
ator, 20-27, 190 seq. 

Resurrection and "Last 
Day," 319, 394, 399 

Resurrection Craved by 
Paul, 346 

Resurrection of the Wicked, 
346 

Resurrection Not a Visible 
Event, The, 337 

Resurrection Not Resusci- 
tation, 329 

Righteousness, God's, 20, 33, 
198 

Righteousness, N. T. Writ- 
ers Assume God's, 24 



428 



INDEX 



Sabbath, Jesus and the, 
125, 147 

Sacrifice, The True Idea Set 

Forth, 228 
Sacrifice of Jesus — Why- 
Final, 230 
Sacrificial System, Jesus and 

the, 203 
Sacrificial System, Central 

Teaching of the, 226 
Salvation — How Effected, 

201, 216, 258 
Salvation Not Spiritual, A, 

314 
Saving Faith, 221 
Savior, Jesus the Complete, 

369 
Savior, The Jesus Who Is 

Our, 259 
Scene of Christ's Toils and 

Triumphs, The, 9 seq., 386 

seq. 
Science, Our Duty Towards, 

2 
Second Coming of Christ, 

The, 305, 391, 416 
Second Coming of Christ, 

The Manner of the, 357 
Second Coming Progres- 
sively Defined, The, 355- 

359 
Second Comings Gradual, 

The, 359, 396 
Sign, Jesus a, 34 
Sin Defined, 113 



Sin and Suffering a Mys- 
tery, 198 

Sin and the Murder of 
Jesus, 251 seq. 

Sin, Jesus and the Sense of, 
232 

Sin, Jesus the Bearer Away 
of, 246 

Sin, Man's Enslavement to, 
30 

Sin Against the Holy Spirit, 
The, 265 seq. 

Sin— When to the Utter- 
most, 250 

Sinlessness of Jesus De- 
scribed, The, 113 seq. 

Sinlessness Not Full-grown 
Perfection, 108 

Sonship of Jesus, The Di- 
vine, 136 

Substitutionary Idea Con- 
demned, 208, 225, 232 

Supper, The Lord's, 34, 35 

Suffering, The Ministry of, 
60-63 

Synagogue and Jesus, The, 
52 

Theology of Jesus Theocen- 

tric, The, 150 
Trinity, The, 83, 85, 158 

War's Place in God's Plan, 

365 
"Wickedness Incarnate," 

360 



JUL 27 1912 



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